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Michael Cunningham's daring, highly original and poignant novel spans an American era from the 19th-century dawn of the industrial revolution, through post-9/11 to 150 years into the future. Cunningham has created three characters to tell the story in three novellas, each featuring a man named Simon, a boy named Lucas and a lovely lady named Catherine. Yet SPECIMEN DAYS is not about time travel, and in the strictest sense it is not science fiction or fantasy, although the point might be argued by those with a literal bent.
"In the Machine" finds Simon already dead, a victim of a sheet metal stamping machine in an 1800s Manhattan foundry. Simon was engaged to marry Catherine, a seamstress in a sweatshop, when he died, and his 14-year-old brother Lucas is given Simon's job at the same machine to help support his ailing parents. Lucas is half in love with Catherine and feels overly protective of her. He believes the machine to be inhabited by his brother's spirit, and the relationship between Lucas, Simon in the machine, and Catherine is colored by this compulsion.
"The Children's Crusade" takes place in early 21st-century Manhattan where a band of children have been programmed to commit individual, random terrorist attacks against individuals on the streets, blowing up themselves and their victims in a deadly embrace. Simon and Catherine, interracial lovers in this story, become embroiled in the plot as Catherine, through her job as a police officer, encounters one of the children, named Luke.
"Like Beauty" finds our three characters again 150 years into the future. The Children's Crusade of the early 21st-century has reduced the planet to a radioactive wilderness, just now recovering from the chaos that the reader never encounters in the middle story --- although the threat is clearly there. Simon in this incarnation is an experimental android, programmed to feel human-like emotions, yet destined to live out his product life as a re-enactment mugger entertaining tourists in a Central Park historical theme park. To divulge Catherine and Lucas's roles would disclose too much.
As in THE HOURS, where Cunningham called on Virginia Woolf as his muse, Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS plays a prominent but subtler role in each story. The slightly damaged young Lucas of "In the Machine" spouts unbidden lines from his idol's writings, in Tourette's syndrome fashion, finding the beauty of the language the only way he can communicate with the fair Catherine. Whitman is the only exposure to the outside world the pitiable programmed children of "Like Beauty" encounter, as their Spartan cells are papered with pages from the book by their manic oppressor. And in "Like Beauty," it is Whitman's poetry that infuses the android Simon with his human emotions.
Cunningham clearly is one of America's most imaginative writers whose talents deserve the awards and accolades bestowed on him. THE HOURS won Cunningham a Pulitzer and the PENN/Faulkner award, and the movie made from this bestselling novel took home its share of Oscars. SPECIMEN DAYS will bring him new fans as he flexes his writing muscle to explore new genres.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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