The Hours Author Hopes For Another Hit With Specimen Days

Posted on June 17, 2005

Michael Cunningham, the author of the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning The Hours, hopes to achieve similar success with his latest novel, Specimen Days. The Hours was also made into a motion picture starring Nicole Kidman. NPR has an interview with Cunningham available here.

In some ways the two books are quite similar. In The Hours, Cunningham improvised on Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's masterpiece. In Specimen Days, Cunningham turns to poet Walt Whitman as an overarching element.
Both books also tell the stories of three characters in different times and places. In Specimen Days, Cunningham sets all three stories in New York City.

The third story in Specimen Days, called "Like Beauty," has a science fiction setting. The story takes place in New York 150 years into the future, when the city is overwhelmed by refugees from the first inhabited planet to be contacted by the people of Earth.