Day by Michael Cunningham

Day is a beautiful little book.

The title refers to the day of April 5. But it’s actually three days, in three sections. The first section is the morning of April 5, 2019. The second section is the afternoon of April 5, 2020. The third section is the evening of April 5, 2021. The same characters appear in all three sections, each following a well-defined and interesting arc of their own. The sections are divided into numerous, short, un-numbered chapters, some no longer than a page. The third-person authorial voice is consistent throughout, but the chapters alternate viewpoints between the characters giving focus and insight to each of them. Cunningham’s ability to inhabit a variety of believable characters: straight and gay men, women, adults, a teenager, a child, is impressive.

Isabel is a thirty-something woman who works as an arts editor for a magazine. She’s married to Dan, who she met in college. Dan had a brief career as a musician but then suffered through a period of addiction. Dan and Isabel have two children: a boy, Nathan, age 9, and a girl, Violet, age 5. Also living with them in their small Brooklyn brownstone is Robbie, Isabel’s younger brother. Isabel and Robbie were close as children, and have been closely-knit with Dan as well, once he came into their life. Robbie is gay and half in love with Dan. A road trip the two took together in college is a frequent, fond, memory. Dan loves Robbie as well, but not sexually. Their relationship is quite tender. Robbie is close with the two children and actively co-parents. Dan has a brother, Garth, an artist who makes fierce sculptures named for Shakespeare’s plays, and Garth is involved with a single mother named Chess who had her baby with Garth’s help and wants her baby, Odin, to know Garth but doesn’t want Garth in their lives.

In April 2019, the family is getting ready for their day. Robbie, a sixth grade teacher has the morning off because his school is being inspected for asbestos. Dan is thinking of reviving his music career and is working on new songs. Isabel commutes to Manhattan for her job. Chess comes by with Odin looking for babysitting so she can get to her job at the University, and angry that Garth, who was supposed to take the baby, didn’t show up on time. Garth arrives soon after, irritated that Chess wouldn’t wait. Violet’s kindergarten only meets in the afternoons, so when Dan gets back from dropping off Nathan at school, Dan and Violet, Garth and Odin go the park. Robbie goes up to his room in the attic to grade student essays. Later that day Robbie has plans to continuing his apartment-hunting. He needs to find a place of his own as Nathan has grown too old to share a bedroom with Violet and needs to take over the attic space.

The book would make a lovely three act play. There are only a few minor characters besides the main ones. The settings are few. And like a good three act play, the second act continues and further complicates the conflicts of the first act before the resolution of the third. The first section comprises nearly half of the novel, the second and third being about equal in length.

Act Two: a year later. Robbie moved out, but has now given up his new apartment after deciding to apply for medical school. Now he’s in Iceland, alone in an isolated cabin, for what was to be a quick trip while waiting for replies to his med school applications, but with COVID travel restrictions, he’s stuck. Nathan has the attic room Robbie vacated. Dan’s music comeback is going moderately well. Dan and Isabel have fallen out of love, but the children and COVID are keeping them together for now. Garth continues his art-making. He’s working on a new piece called “Hamlet.” He’s decided he’s in love with Chess and wants to be more fully in her life and the life of their son. Chess is wary.

Act Three: a year later. I won’t give away the ending, just to say that all of the character arcs move forward in interesting, realistic, but surprising ways. The ending is touching.

The prose is beautifully written. In the second section much of the writing consists of letters, emails, instagram posts, and text messages that the characters send to each other, as befits their isolated circumstances due to COVID. In the third section the text returns to straightforward prose.

Reading a story set in the COVID pandemic recalled anxious feelings for me. The children attend school online. Garth wants to see Chess and the baby but is allowed only to stand outside on the sidewalk and wave to them through the window. Isabel describes the constant sound of sirens going by in the street. This section is in early April when the COVID crisis was at its most dangerous. Robbie is stuck in Iceland. Violet worries about the virus coming into the house and insists that the family keep all of the windows closed. That was a scary time. And New York had a worse experience than others.

There is one other character who appears throughout the book. Robbie and Isabel, but mostly Robbie, have invented an imaginary man named Wolfe and curate a life for him through Instagram postings under the name Wolfe_man. He’s a fantasy man for both of them, living out a romantic, adventurous life, and fulfilling their unmet desires. They imagine him working as a pediatrician, walking his dog, thinking of buying a farmhouse in New England. He’s handsome, confidant, exciting, the lover both of them want, and the person they want to be. When Robbie finds himself alone in Iceland, he imagines that Wolfe is sharing his cabin, companioning his loneliness.

Because Chess is a University English professor we get a scene in the first section of her teaching her class. The students are discussing House of Mirth. Later, when Robbie is alone in his cabin in Iceland he reads The Mill on the Floss. He writes to Isabel, “I’m glad I had the good sense to pack a copy of Mill on the Floss. It’s even better than I remembered. Please add to your own personal check list, Read Mill on the Floss again.” (p. 195)

I love books that reference other books. Dan and Isabel quote the ending of The Great Gatsby, too, later. I’ve already read House of Mirth and The Great Gatsby. I will add “Read Mill on the Floss” to my personal check-list. Long ago I read Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World. I read his Pulitzer Prize winning, The Hours, too, when it came out (and saw the movie, and the opera at the Met last year). He has about a half dozen other novels, which I may get to, after The Mill on the Floss.