By Nightfall

44-year-old Peter is prosperous, childless, the owner of a big New York apartment and a player in the NY contemporary art dealing scene. But when his wife's younger brother Mizzy comes to stay, Peter's world is turned upside down.

About the Author :
Michael Cunningham was raised in Los Angeles and lives in New York City. He is the author of the novels "The Hours," "A Home at the End of the World," "Specimen Days," and "Flesh and Blood." His work has appeared in "The New Yorker" and "Best American Short Stories," and he is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for "The Hours," which was a "New York Times" bestseller, and was chosen as a Best Book of 1998 by "The New York Times," "Los Angeles Times," and "Publishers Weekly." He is a Professor at Brooklyn College for the M.F.A program.

Review :
"The novel is less a snapshot of the way we live now than a consideration of the timeless consolations of love and art in the shadow of death, and its resolution--inevitable yet startling, like the slap of a wave--is a triumph." --"The New Yorker" "Rather witty and a little outrageous . . . 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. . . a cerebral, quirky reflection on the allure of phantom ideals and even, ultimately, on what a traditional marriage needs to survive." --Ron Charles, "The Washington Post" "[Cunningham] makes you turn the pages. He tells a story here, but not too much a story. You aren't deadened by detail; you're eager to know what happens next." --Jeanette Winterson, "The New York Times Book Review""" "Where art and humanity converge and where they part form a double helix in By Nightfall and account for the novel's most considered and lovely prose. Cunningham's observations of our desperate search for the real fill and break the heart." --Ellen Kanner, "Miami Herald""" "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""" "Beauty, in its infinite variety and its power to transfix and seduce and delude, is a central theme of 'By Nightfall, ' the latest from the auth