Tripartite

Finished Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days last night, which will elate CEH because she's been nagging me to read it for months. It's certainly like nothing else I've read. It does some new stuff, and does it in a new way. Not so sure about the insistent Walt Whitman theme going on, though; and I have to admit that when a line of Emily Dickinson appeared from apparently nowhere I groaned a bit and begged it to stop. The description is very detailed, possibly too much so - Cunningham would make a brilliant film director, probably, with his eye for accuracy. He'd be perfectionist and dictatorial, but a damned good film would come out of it. But his description tells too much and just doesn't leave anything much to be imagined, except for the psychology of the characters, who are - without exception - weird.

Saying that, any book that brings together the industrial age, terrorism and an android in love with an alien lizard is probably worth a look - particularly because it doesn't feel as strange as it should. The android/lizard part actually made the most sense. It definitely took me longer than usual to get into the book and what it was doing (and I'm still not entirely sure of that), which isn't necessarily a bad thing; and I enjoyed it more as it progressed (which probably says more about my being unsettled at the beginning than about the book itself).

It was a thought-provoking read, though. Maybe it doesn't quite work, but it's cleverly different, and a mainly enjoyable way of spending a few hours.