Specimen Days - Michael Cunningham

[The Master™]

This is my last ever post on this board, so don't reply to me on here - only about the book...

This may appeal to a cross-genre of people...

The book is in three parts: "In The Machine" a ghost story set during the Industrial Revolution, "The Children's Crusade" set in a city beset by terrorism in the early 21st Century, and "Like Beauty" set in New York some 150 years in the future dealing with alien refugees from the first inhabited planet visited by humans...

All three stories concern the same three characters: a young boy, an older man and a young woman...

 

[ravenus]

Sounds very interesting...but, but, but...why is The Master leaving?

 

[lazygun]

Hope not,...7000 odd posts....a loss.

 

[Alia]

A link:

http://michaelcunninghamwriter.com/site.php?a=books&b=4

This book looks really good... from that link... did a little more digging...
Barnes and Noble... if you look at the reviews down at the bottom of the page things get interesting....

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=vi5DdNFB2o&isbn=0374299625&itm=1

Now I'm wondering if anyone from the forum has read this book and what do you think.




And Master... *uses firm mom tone* Don't make me come over to the UK and make you come back to the forum!!!!

 

[Princess Ivy]

see, tm, the book is now ignored, your pressance is requested
and i'll take chocky muffins, or pumpkin, or blueberry, or cream cheese and cinnamon...
heck, i love muffins...

 

[GOLLUM]

YEH and I'll throw in a bucketloaod or two of leather-clad ladies along with the keys to the upper deck of the Basement....

Life's just ain't the same without TM.....

 

[Rosemary]

see, tm, the book is now ignored, your pressance is requested
and i'll take chocky muffins, or pumpkin, or blueberry, or cream cheese and cinnamon...
heck, i love muffins...

Well the book sounds interesting enough. Actually, I think I do love muffins after all.......
Bring him back, Alia

 

[rune]

Sounds like a strange, complex story

 

[The Master™]

Having read the book... I have to say that it is in the style of modern fiction writers, not horror or sci-fi writers...

The lynchpin to the stories seems to be Walt Whitman (poet of the 19th Century - http://www.bartleby.com/142/) and the interaction between the characters Simon, Luke and Catherine (Cat and Catareen)...

All in all the book is beyond me as to what it is trying to say... Certainly not the kind of books that I tend to read... I have a problem trying to see underlying metaphors or some such... I just read a story for THE story, nothing more... But if others have insights, I'd love to hear them...

[EDIT] The final story doesn't really push any envelopes in the Alien/Human interaction of the future... It deals with a lizard-like alien race in the future... And how one female alien called Catareen interacts with an artifical human named Simon... And deals with her mysterious background and his uncertain future...