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A review by obscuredbyclouds
By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham
4.0
I really didn't like the main protagonist of this book. Peter is a middle-aged art dealer in New York City, feeling sorry for himself, obsessed with beauty and youth, and wishing his wife, Rebecca, was the younger version of herself. Then Rebecca's much younger brother Mizzy (The Mistake), a genius/drug addict/ Yale drop out drifter type in his early 20's comes to visit them for some time. Peter falls in, what he calls, love with him, what I would call lust and a slight obsession. In Mizzy he sees the early beauty potential of his wife, his own possibilities and his dead brother combined.
It's hard to shake the feeling that Peter's pretentiousness also somewhat applies to the novel itself. The obsession with youth and perfect beauty, the carefully constructed sentences, the descriptions of New York (always New York!) and dreams and self analysis... And despite this, I loved reading this novel! It's my second Cunningham, and now I'm determined to read them all. I grabbed this on a whim in an Oxfam charity shop and breezed through it.
It's hard to shake the feeling that Peter's pretentiousness also somewhat applies to the novel itself. The obsession with youth and perfect beauty, the carefully constructed sentences, the descriptions of New York (always New York!) and dreams and self analysis... And despite this, I loved reading this novel! It's my second Cunningham, and now I'm determined to read them all. I grabbed this on a whim in an Oxfam charity shop and breezed through it.