Day by Michael Cunningham
As the world changes around them, a family weathers the storms of growing up, growing older, falling in and out of love, losing the things that are most precious and learning to go on.
April 5th, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, troubled husband and wife, are both a little bit in love with Isabels younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, has created a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.
April 5th, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown the brownstone is feeling more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan circle each other warily, communicating mostly in veiled jabs and frustrated sighs. And beloved Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts and his secret Instagram life for company.
April 5th, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family comes together to reckon with a new, very different reality with what theyve learned, what theyve lost, and how they might go on.
From the brilliant mind of Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, Day is a searing, exquisitely crafted meditation on love and loss, and the struggles and limitations of family life how to live together and apart, and maybe even escape the marriage plot entirely.
Cunningham is one of our great American writers, and here is another masterpiece Read it and be changed Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less