By Nightfall in Queereaders

Apr 25, 2014 Simay Yildiz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: canlabirsene, lgbtq

For English, please visit CommunityBookStop.
Orijinali, CAN'la Bir Sene'de yayınlandı.

Michael Cunningham'le ilk tanışmam Saatler ile oldu-- hem kitabı, hem de filmi çok ama çok sevdim. Diğer kitaplarını da ne zamandır istiyordum ve Türkiye'deki yayıncısının CAN olması isabet oldu. Gece İnerken'in başrol oyuncuları orta yaşlı bir çift: Peter ve Rebecca Harris. Dışarıdan bakınca pek çok insanın isteyeceği bir hayat tarzına sahipler. İçlerinde de çok fena değiller yani; her orta yaşlı çiftin karşıla ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Aug 14, 2013 Nora rated it really liked it

Shelves: novel, lgbtqia-plus

I like Michael Cunningham. He’s very clever and goes deep into his characters’ heads. This novel has the kind of The New Yorker-y plot that I usually don’t care for (rich straight couple lead brittle, unfulfilling lives and don’t communicate well) but I did like this book. The main character Peter is a somewhat depressed 44-year old man who is obsessed with beauty in all its forms, but doesn’t feel like he can create it. Instead, he buys and sells it, or tries to—-he’s an art dealer. He’s always I like Michael Cunningham. He’s very clever and goes deep into his characters’ heads. This novel has the kind of The New Yorker-y plot that I usually don’t care for (rich straight couple lead brittle, unfulfilling lives and don’t communicate well) but I did like this book. The main character Peter is a somewhat depressed 44-year old man who is obsessed with beauty in all its forms, but doesn’t feel like he can create it. Instead, he buys and sells it, or tries to—-he’s an art dealer. He’s always hoping to discover an amazing genius, but it never seems to happen. This novel is proof positive that you don’t have to have a “sympathetic character” to make it an enjoyable read because Peter is somewhat selfish and at times comes off as an upper-class twit, but I still liked hearing everything he thought and felt. This writer is very compassionate to his characters.

As the blurb tells you, trouble begins to brew when Peter’s wife’s brother “Mizzy” comes to stay. Mizzy is short for “The Mistake,” so I thought Mizzy would be this sad sack character that everyone puts down. But actually he’s the spoiled and cosseted most-loved member of his family. It turns out the book is about Peter falling in love with Mizzy and seeing him as the beauty he’s been looking for. Given that Mizzy is his much younger brother-in-law whom he’s known since Mizzy was a tiny child and Mizzy is only a few years older than Peter’s daughter, this development made me say “ick.” (Because of the weird incest-y overtones.) However, it didn’t turn out to be very disturbing at all. Cunningham somehow kept it fairly classy.

This may lead you to conclude that my head is in the gutter, but one of the things that interested me most about this book was a really well-done straight sex scene, between Peter and his wife. I was totally sold on it. I just think it’s great that a gay man wrote this scene because A) people are so great; just because you identify as one thing doesn’t mean you’ve never done this other thing, and/or B) writers are so great that maybe they don’t have to even do something in order to describe it, as so many M/M writers who are ladies have claimed. It makes me think of Arnold Bennett describing an execution at the guillotine without ever having seen one, or a biography I read of Patrick O’Brian which gave no indication of O’Brian ever having gone on a sail in his life. Anyway, nicely done, Mr. Cunningham!

My favorite parts were the descriptions of being an art dealer. I kept expecting that the narration would change perspective at some point and we would get the POV of Peter’s wife Rebecca, but that never happened. I think that was good because not everything needs to be understood. There were a lot of small things that were never explained (why was Peter’s daughter so angry? what was the cause of Peter’s constant stomach pains?) and that’s very lifelike.

I read a bunch of the other Goodreads reviews of this book, and I was amused to see that no one is a fan of ALL of Michael Cunningham’s books, and each reviewer likes and dislikes different ones. I’ll just throw my hat in by saying that I really liked A Home At The End of the World and Flesh and Blood, but I didn’t enjoy The Hours.

Book design: Not to my taste. Boring. Ugly cover, thought it was a picture of a dust mop until I really examined it. Maybe I’m too shallow to appreciate it? But it just seems a bit restrained for a book about art and beauty.

What other book does this one remind me of? The Page Turner by David Leavitt.

Theme song: Ode to a Boy by Yazoo. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jan 27, 2012 Katie rated it liked it

Shelves: glbt, audiobooks

I had really mixed feelings about this book. Michael Cunningham is another favorite for his deliberate, descriptive, lyrical writing that seems to illustrate its subtleties in plot and atmosphere so perfectly. There are no wasted words in his books. There is also some sort of nascent or lingering homosexuality in his characters. The Hours has been one of my favorite books for a long time because of the connections among the three stories and narrators.

This one is a little different, in that mos ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Dec 25, 2010 Becca rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: queer-lit, literature

I'm a Michael Cunningham fan girl. It's impossible for me to be unbiased about anything Michael Cunningham writes. I have a sneaking suspicion that I have some amount of cognitive dissonance about By Nightfall - a book that I've wanted for over a year; that I picked up and lingered over every time I was in a bookstore; that I scoured every used bookstore for; that I finally paid full price in a physical bookstore for a new copy because I wanted it that badly (paperback; I haven't lost my mind); I'm a Michael Cunningham fan girl. It's impossible for me to be unbiased about anything Michael Cunningham writes. I have a sneaking suspicion that I have some amount of cognitive dissonance about By Nightfall - a book that I've wanted for over a year; that I picked up and lingered over every time I was in a bookstore; that I scoured every used bookstore for; that I finally paid full price in a physical bookstore for a new copy because I wanted it that badly (paperback; I haven't lost my mind); that I derailed a vacation for in order to see Cunningham speak about at the national book fair. So, I'm a little obsessed. And I have a suspicion that I read the book that I wanted to read, rather than the book Cunningham wrote.

I loved the introspective pieces of this book. The interstitial portions where characters ordered coffee and went on train rides were Cunningham at his best - he describes the mundanity of the human condition in a way that is both honest and profound and is completely unparalleled.

I loved the concepts in this book - that we, as humans, are in love with beauty, in love with art, in love with the profound and constantly disappointed in the inability of reality to produce concrete things that live up to the expectations in our imaginations. That we cultivate the relationships that exist in our life for their symbolism, and for their reflection on ourselves and for the concepts that they engender moreso than for the actually people in them. That the people we are when we are honestly alone -- mentally, physically alone -- is not ever the person that we can be to others.

I did not love the actual plot of this book. I was bored, rather than enthralled by Mizzy. I felt that at times, the symbolism was too on the nose (seriously, a character named "The Mistake") and other times the mundanity was, well, mundane. Perhaps those feelings are apropos, given the context -- Cunningham is one of the artists he describes, striving to find beauty, to unsettle, to provoke and coming up just a little short. ...more

Like · see review