{"id":481,"date":"2011-05-16T11:42:46","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T16:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=481"},"modified":"2011-05-16T11:46:59","modified_gmt":"2011-05-16T16:46:59","slug":"481","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/481\/","title":{"rendered":"By Nightfall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cunningham, Michael. By Nightfall.<\/em> Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Hardcover. 256pp. $19.99. ISBN: 0374299080.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Peter Harris returns home and hears the shower running. He sees the pink blur of his wife, Rebecca, behind the frosted glass shower door. He looks in. She\u2019s facing away from him, and the shower seems to have taken away twenty years. Rebecca is young again. She turns, surprised, but it isn\u2019t Rebecca; it\u2019s Ethan, Rebecca\u2019s younger brother. He says, \u201cHey\u201d and is not the least uncomfortable for Peter to see him naked.<\/p>\n

Peter is 44, a handsome and successful second-tier art dealer; Peter\u2019s life is filled with the conflict of art vs. commerce \u2015 the practice and ethics of which artists to represent, which artists to feature in his front gallery, which art to sell to which buyer. Peter pursues beauty \u2015 both physical and artistic \u2015 and youth, and he finds both desire and disillusion.<\/p>\n

Peter\u2019s wife, Rebecca, is the lovely editor of a small literary journal. Her 23-year-old brother Ethan is so much younger that he is known in the family as Mizzy \u2015 the mistake. He\u2019s a beautiful sexy improvident drifter who\u2019s shameless and unreliable, a drug addict who comes to stay with them and plans to do \u201csomething in the arts.\u201d Rebecca hopes Peter can guide Mizzy toward something respectable in the arts and away from drugs.<\/p>\n

However, Peter\u2019s in emotional turmoil as he tries to conceal his improper attraction to Mizzy. Peter has been straight his entire life, and he tries to explain his surprising attraction to Mizzy\u2019s youth and vitality, to Mizzy\u2019s reminding him of Rebecca, to unresolved feelings about his brother who died of AIDS, or to Mizzy as the embodiment of the beauty that he\u2019s been looking for in art. When Peter overhears Mizzy on the phone buying drugs, he doesn\u2019t let Rebecca know, because she might send Mizzy away.<\/p>\n

By Nightfall<\/em> is told in the third person through Peter\u2019s point of view. The title may refer to Peter’s growing older and losing his sense of youth. Peter’s nocturnal wanderings also demonstrate his loneliness and sense of isolation.<\/p>\n

Despite the gay sensibilities in By Nightfall<\/em>, the only fleshed-out sex scene (so to speak) is a heterosexual one \u2015 between Peter and Rebecca. The overtly homosexual action in the novel is limited to just two kisses, but Peter\u2019s internal thoughts throughout the novel reflect his obsession with Mizzy.<\/p>\n

This is Pulitzer-Prize winner Cunningham\u2019s seventh novel. He won the Stonewall Literature Award<\/a> in 1999 for The Hours<\/em><\/a> and won a Stonewall honor book award<\/a> in 1991 for A Home at the End of the World<\/a>.<\/em> Both books have been made into films.<\/p>\n

Cunningham\u2019s novels often cover great spans of time and space. By Nightfall<\/em> covers only a few days in a small world, but that world embraces art, commerce, relationships, and marriage, and those days bring about an epiphany for Peter and Rebecca.<\/p>\n

Highly recommended for all libraries.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by, Larry Romans<\/strong>
\nVanderbilt University Libraries<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cunningham, Michael. By Nightfall. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Hardcover. 256pp. $19.99. ISBN: 0374299080. Peter Harris returns home and hears the shower running. He sees the pink blur of his wife, Rebecca, behind the frosted glass shower door. He looks in. She\u2019s facing away from him, and the shower seems to have taken away twenty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}