Book Reviews
Cunningham has taken on the classic plot of the uninvited or unexpected stranger or guest whose arrival brings chaos, self-knowledge, tragedy, the ruin of one kind of life that may or may not lead to something better.... Cunningham is drawn to simple, potent plots...saving his energy for the hearts and minds, the groins and guts, of his characters. Yet he makes you turn the pages. He tells a story here, but not too much of a story. You aren't deadened by detail; you're eager to know what happens next. Cunningham writes so well, and with such an economy of language, that he can call up the poet's exact match. His dialogue is deft and fast. The pace of the writing is skilled—stretched or contracted at just the right time.
Jeannette Winterson - New York Times
There are flashier, more pyrotechnic stylists, but for pure, elegant, efficient beauty, Cunningham is astounding. He's developed this captivating narrative voice that mingles his own sharp commentary with Peter's mock-heroic despair. Half Henry James, half James Joyce, but all Cunningham, it's an irresistible performance, cerebral and campy, marked by stabbing moments of self-doubt immediately undercut by theatrical asides and humorous quips.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
So many of Cunningham's physical descriptions read like confident prose poems, where you imagine what's left between the lines.... As a testament to the richness of the literary imagination, By Nightfall' is a success. You can't read this novel without the sense of how worlds can be found in a drop of water, or in an offhand comment, or in the curve of a vase.... By Nightfall is a meditation on beauty, and it has its own indelible qualities of beauty.
Matthew Gilbert - Boston Globe
Contemplating an affair that never was, SoHo art dealer Peter Harris laments that he "could see it all too clearly." The same holds true for Cunningham's emotionally static and drearily conventional latest (after Specimen Days). Peter and his wife, Rebecca—who edits a mid-level art magazine—have settled into a comfortable life in Manhattan's art world, but their staid existence is disrupted by the arrival of Rebecca's much younger brother, Ethan—known as Mizzy, short for "The Mistake." Family golden child Mizzy is a recovering drug addict whose current whim has landed him in New York where he wants to pursue a career in "the arts." Watching Mizzy—whose resemblance to a younger Rebecca unnerves Peter—coast through life without responsibilities makes Peter question his own choices and wonder if it's more than Mizzy's freedom that he covets. Cunningham's sentences are, individually, something to behold, but they're unfortunately pressed into the service of a dud story about a well-off New Yorker's existential crisis.
Publishers Weekly
"What do you do when you're no longer the hero of your own story?" That jolt, that upending realization that your life is just a stream of small dreams and small mistakes, is a defining theme in Cunningham's coruscatingly excellent fiction (remember The Hours?), expressed here in a way that makes you ache. Peter has had some success as a gallery owner in New York; his wife, Rebecca, is accomplished and seemingly confident if not the sparkler she once was. She's also from a not quite pleasantly nutty family, with one much younger brother, Mizzy (short for the Mistake; he wasn't planned), who's a brilliant, beautiful screwup now heading toward Peter and Rebecca. Rebecca's committed to saving Mizzy, so in he sweeps—"heartless, cynical, despairing youth"—and shows Peter how ordinary his life is: he's an indifferent parent, he sells art but hasn't achieved beauty or grandeur, he's been "banging on a tub to make a bear dance when we would move the stars to pity"—one of a hundred breath-catching, thought-shaking lines gilding the perfect narrative. Verdict: Mizzy nearly drives Peter and Rebecca to rash acts of their own, but in the end he's no answer, and they find that small might be enough. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [H]is most concentrated novel, a bittersweet paean to human creativity and its particularly showy flourishing in hothouse Manhattan.... The result is an exquisite, slyly witty, warmly philosophical, and urbanely eviscerating tale of the mysteries of beauty and desire, art and delusion, age and love. —Donna Seaman
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