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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times David Ebershoff
What determines the success of this is, I believe, the author's moral vision. Cunningham cares most passionately (and most
knowingly) about the largest and most hopeful human experiences: compassion, community, art, connection -- the infinite manifestations of love. It is his unique moral vision that successfully hinges three distinct narrative panels into a triptych of unified beauty. It's what raises his individual stories out of their genres into the glorious realm of art.
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Outstanding
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New York Observer David Thomson
This is a transforming book, the lovely, tattered record of our time and place, and of our wish to prevail. [30 May 2005, p.1]
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Outstanding
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Library Journal Henry L. Carrigan Jr.
Cunningham's vivid prose captures the intricate weave of love and expectation that propels the hopes of one generation as it fades into another. [15 May 2005, p.104]
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
With its narrative leaps and self-conscious flights into the transcendent, Cunningham's fourth novel sometimes seems ready to collapse under the weight of its lavishness and ambition--but thrillingly, it never does. This is daring, memorable fiction.
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Outstanding
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The Onion A.V. Club Donna Bowman
Cunningham seems to have invented his own literary form, and in Specimen Days, he crafts it with a master's assurance.
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Outstanding
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Houston Chronicle John Freeman
Like its namesake, this novel is a work so original it unfolds with a whiff of inevitability. You will find it hard to believe it did not exist before. That is what prophecy does; it brings the world full circle, creating and containing at the same time.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Philip Hoare
It is that abiding, dreamlike, cinematic sweep of time - and our place within it - which makes Specimen Days an ultimately satisfying, richly rewarding and deeply enjoyable book.
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Favorable
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The Independent Marianne Brace
Specimen Days isn't always convincing but, like Leaves of Grass before it, makes us look again. Whitman is the poet of celebration.
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Favorable
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London Review Of Books Jacqueline Rose
This is Cunningham’s most ambitious novel and, for me, his finest. Leaves of Grass is the text spoken by the characters, but he has named his novel after Specimen Days, which brings the ecstasy of Whitman’s poem back to ground.
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Favorable
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The Observer Michel Faber
Specimen Days, in among its misfires and misjudgments, contains more incidental beauty and emotional insight than many impeccably dull items on the shortlists of prestigious literary prizes. And it's by far the best gothic historical sci-fi cop thriller you'll ever read.
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Favorable
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The Observer Jane Stevenson
A provoking and rewarding novel, with many incidental pleasures, though at times, the issues are so close to the surface that the narrative feels like shallow waters overlying the reefs and shoals of Philosophy 101.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Sam Leith
As a novel of ideas, Specimen Days manages to be both entertaining and moving.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Ethan Canin
I, for one, wish Whitman weren't a part of any of it, but that truly is not a major concern. The Whitman motif is just one aspect of Cunningham's brave experimentation, and even an experiment with an unwanted result can be a successful experiment.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle David Wiegand
While Specimen Days may have its flaws, it is clearly and often compellingly the work of a gifted storyteller with an ambitious mind and a lyrical writing style.
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Favorable
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USA Today Deidre Donahue
Just when most literary fiction reads like an endless meditation on how many neurotics can dance on the head of a pin, along comes Michael Cunningham's wildly ambitious, brave new novel, Specimen Days.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Joy Press
None of Specimen Days' moving parts fit together precisely, each one too swollen with ideas and prose to be a cog in this contraption. But Cunningham's vision of history is enthralling and messy.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Gail Caldwell
It is a love song of a novel, rich and melancholy and overflowing with smartness, and if it veers off-road a bit at the peak of its race -- well, even that seems a wildness in keeping with America's bard.
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Favorable
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LA Weekly Michelle Huneven
Whatever else can be said about this wildly ambitious book, Cunningham’s mastery of the sentence and beautifully wrought image is never, ever in question.
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Favorable
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Salon Laura Miller
While the devices and clichés of genre fiction can make it entertaining but shallow, the narrative listlessness of a lot of literary fiction often undermines its lovely prose and delicate character insights. Readers seldom get both in one package.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Donna Seaman
Those who read open-mindedly and believe that artists are free to follow wherever their imaginations lead, readers who value novels of ideas, enjoy variations on themes and strongly delineated patterns, recognize Cunningham's superb craftsmanship and pick up on his sharp wit and connecting vision--they will find much to contemplate and enjoy.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Terrence Rafferty
Both a very bad book and a very brave one.
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Mixed
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The Economist
The first section is eerie and distinguished. The second is charming. The third stinks.
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Mixed
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Atlantic Monthly Joseph O'Neill
Michael Cunningham is one of the most humane and moving writers we have; but the toiling quality of Specimen Days suggests that (unlike, say, David Mitchell) he may lack the naturally impassioned formalism required to make a multi-genre novel come truly to life.
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Mixed
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Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese
Exquisitely written but bizarre and disjointed.
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Mixed
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The New Republic Deborah Friedell
It is a testament to the faith that we place in the novel that we sometimes think that it can do everything at once. But everything is a very big subject. Michael Cunningham's imagination is not as vast as Whitman's, and his talents are no match for so many multitudes.
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Mixed
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The Independent Peter J Conradi
[Cunningham] evidently wants his fiction to surprise its author as much as its readers, and thus Specimen Days is always unexpected and brave.
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Unfavorable
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
Reads like a clunky and precious literary exercise -- a creative writing class assignment that intermittently reveals glimpses of the author's storytelling talents, but too often obscures those gifts with self-important and ham-handed narrative pyrotechnics.
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