There is exciting news about a new Michael Cunningham novel coming out next year – called Day – and it has prompted me to do the first in a series that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Anybody familiar with my end-of-year best books lists knows that I love ranking things. And what could be more unnecessary than ranking all the books I’ve read by particular authors?? Well, it might spark some conversations. And Cunningham is a good person to start with, if only because I have actually read all of his books.
So, here we go – some unnecessary rankings of all of Michael Cunningham’s output:
9. Specimen Days (2005)
The only Michael Cunningham novel that I dislike, the three sections of this take place in the past, then the present, and then the robot-future. And are tied together by Walt Whitman. My dislike for science fiction and historical fiction, and my complete ignorance of anything about Whitman, combine to make this one a slog for me (though I did enjoy the section set in the present).
8. A Wild Swan and Other Tales (2015)
Cunningham’s collection of fairy tales takes different angles to the traditional narratives – we see Jack and the Beanstalk from the Giant’s POV, for instance. It was fine, but this is a well-worn path, and there wasn’t much of striking originality here.
7. By Nightfall (2010)
The only reason this one is quite low is that I don’t remember very much about the story – a story of love triangle / struggle between a man, his wife and his brother-in-law? Possibly? The main thing I remember is the clever revelation that a much-feted conceptual artist is actually a bit of a charlatan.
6. Golden States (1984)
Cunningham has more or less disowned his first novel, about a boy travelling across America to try and intervene in his sister’s relationship – but I thought it was very good. You could see all the hallmarks of Cunningham’s writing that would develop further, but it’s a compelling and emotionally sensitive novel on its own terms.
5. Land’s End (2002)
Despite what Wikipedia says, I think this is Cunningham’s only non-fiction book – a memoir of sorts about Provincetown that is also a travelogue or visitors’ guide or something merging all of these.
4. A Home at the End of the World (1990)
This was marketed as Cunningham’s first novel when it was published six years after Golden States, and is the first of Cunningham’s many friends-as-unconventional-family dynamics. As ever, he is brilliant at the relationships between a curious group of people and there is much to love in this coming-of-age story. Colin Farrell, incidentally, was brilliant in an otherwise OK film adaptation.
3. Flesh and Blood (1995)
The top three Cunningham books are all absolute masterpieces. I believe this is his longest, and it covers several generations of a complex family. Cunningham is on his best form in depicting the knotty communication and miscommunication between parents and children and there are many moments of extraordinary beautiful. The best death scene I have ever read in literature.
2. The Snow Queen (2014)
His most recent novel was somehow almost a decade ago – another group of family and friends living unhealthily interdependent, but somehow beautiful, lives together. The premise is that a strange light in the sky gives a character a quasi-religious experience, but really this is a book about community.
1. The Hours (1998)
I think Cunningham is an example of the best book also being the most famous. His clever plotting interweaves Virginia Woolf writing Mrs Dalloway, a 1940s housewife reading Mrs Dalloway, and a 1990s woman whose life mirrors Mrs Dalloway’s. The writing is poetically beautiful but it’s also a page-turner. Even several re-reads in, I race through it.
So, there we go! Do you agree with my rankings? Anybody you’d like to appear in a future Unnecessary Rankings??