Books
Cunningham’s ‘Day’ is one of the best books of the year
Characters are resilient, even hopeful, in the midst of disease, death
‘Day’
By Michael Cunningham
c. 2023, Random House
$28/273 pages
“She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day,” Virginia Woolf, the groundbreaking, queer, gender-bending, feminist, novelist and essayist, writes in “Mrs. Dalloway” of Clarissa, a society woman, wife of a Parliament member and mother, who’s giving a party on a June day in 1920s London.
Since the pandemic, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, during the Lavender Scare, going back to the dawn of time, who, especially if they’re queer, hasn’t often felt like Clarissa? Even on lovely June days.
“Day,” a new novel by Michael Cunningham, his first novel since “The Snow Queen” in 2014, beautifully and eerily reflects this feeling. Its characters are fearful and fragile, yet, resilient, even hopeful, in the midst of disease and death.
Like “Mrs. Dalloway,” “Day,” takes place during one day – April 5. Only, the day is spread over three years.
The morning of the day is in April 2019 – before the pandemic. When no one’s talking about, let alone heard of, COVID.
The afternoon of the day is in April 2020 – at the height of the pandemic. Before the COVID vaccines have been developed. When everyone (except low-income, essential workers) is locked down by themselves or with their loved ones.
The evening of the day is in April 2021 when people, wondering what to make of the “new normal,” are beginning to emerge from the pandemic.
As it is in several of Cunningham’s novels, the main characters of “Day,” are a family (along, with a few friends and relations, who are supporting characters).
As with “Mrs. Dalloway,” and with Cunningham’s luminous “The Hours,” in “Day,” the city, New York, and the passing of time, itself, are characters.
“A man pulls up the metal shutter of his shoe repair shop,” Cunningham writes in “Day,” “A young woman, ponytailed, jogs past a middle-aged man who, wearing a little black dress and combat boots, is finally returning home.”
Dan, his wife Isabel, and their two children — five-year-old Violet and 10-year-old Nathan — live in a brownstone in Brooklyn. Dan is a musician. He’s had his struggles with cocaine and has performed in a rock band. Now, he does a lot of house husband/child care tasks as Isabel, a photo editor, works hard to keep her magazine from dying.
Isabel’s charming younger gay brother lives in their attic loft. It’s a New York City real estate/break up thing. Robbie, a sixth grade school teacher, has just broken up with his boyfriend. He can’t afford to live on his own. He questions why, 15 years ago, he decided against going to medical school.
Dan and Isabel decide that Robbie has to move out and find a place of his own because their kids are too old to share a bedroom.
Though, “Day” references George Eliot, it’s a 21st-century narrative. When Robbie, after the virus (never explicitly called COVID) enters the world, gets stuck in Iceland, he develops Wolfe, an idealized version of himself on Instagram.
You never see the word “COVID” or “pandemic” in “Day.” Yet it’s clear that a virus (likely COVID) has entered the characters’ world. Their world, as with real life at the time, has reminders of AIDS. Rob develops a cough that’s reminiscent of a symptom at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Dan and Isabel’s marriage is becoming strained. They are both in love with Robbie. Thankfully, it’s not what you think! It’s not a lust thing. Robbie represents something ideal to them.
Few have more evocatively channeled the sensibility and style of Woolf than Cunningham.
Woolf – her awareness that a novel about a day featuring nothing more than a woman giving a party; a man, at a street corner, taking off his hat to greet a woman he knows; or a wife trying to calm her husband, a “shell-shocked” World War I vet; can be as interesting as murder-and-battle-filled fiction – is as tightly etched in Cunningham’s DNA as a pair of skinny jeans.
As a teenager in Pasadena, Calif., he devoured Virginia Woolf’s novels as avidly as his friends turned on to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, Cunningham told me when I interviewed him for the Blade before the release of “The Hours,” the 2002 movie of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name.
(“The Hours” was adapted into an opera with the same name in 2022.)
But Cunningham, who is married to psychotherapist Ken Corbett and Professor of the Practice in Creative Writing at Yale University, is no mere imitator of Woolf.
The alchemy of Cunningham’s talent is his own. “Day” was well worth waiting almost a decade for. It’s one of the best books of this or any year.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
I’m a lesbian and LGBTQ books would have changed my life
Misguided parents pushing Montgomery County court case
As a child born in Maryland in the 80’s, I had very few LGBTQ+ role models other than Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres. In high school, I went through the motions of going out on Friday nights with boyfriends and dancing with them at prom, but I felt nothing. I desperately wanted to fit in, and it took me until my senior year of high school to finally admit to myself that I was different – and that it hurt too much to hide it anymore.
When I think back on those years, I feel the heartache and pain all over again. I used to lay awake at night begging God not to make me gay. When a boy on my Cross Country team accused me and my friends of being lesbians, I scoffed and said, “You wish.” I hid my true self in cheap wine coolers while my hate for myself festered.
I found healing in books, my creative writing class, and my school’s literary magazine. Writing allowed me to hold up a mirror to myself and see that I could be many things: a loving daughter and sister, a supportive friend, a dedicated member of the Cross Country team, and also a girl who wanted a girlfriend. In my love poems, I evolved from ambiguous pronouns to distinctly feminine ones. When I felt ready to tell my best friend, I showed her one of my poems. To my surprise, the world did not end. She smiled and said, “It’s a good poem. Are you ready to go to the mall?”
I’m one of the lucky ones. When I finally did come out to my parents, they told me they would always love me and want me to be happy. That’s not the case for more than 40% of LGBTQ+ youth, who are kicked out of their homes after they find the courage to tell their family who they truly are. We are facing a mental health epidemic among LGBTQ+ youth, with 41% seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, the vast majority living in homes that aren’t accepting.
Some of the dissenting parents in Mahmoud vs. Taylor argue that inclusive books aren’t appropriate for elementary school kids. To clarify, these books are simply available in schools – they aren’t required reading for anyone. There is nothing sexual or provocative about stories like “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” or “Jacob’s Room to Choose” that send a very simple, non-political message: We all are different, and we all deserve to be treated with respect. Opting out of books that show diversity, out of fear that it might “make kids gay” fails to recognize a fundamental truth: art, pop culture, even vegan food cannot make someone gay. I was born this way. There were times I wished that I wasn’t, and that was because I didn’t have books like these telling me it was OK to be who I am.
I wonder how many parents opting out of these books will end up having a LGBTQ+ child. It is both horrible and true that these parents have two choices: love and accept your LGBTQ+ child, or risk losing them. Now that I’m a parent myself, I feel more than ever that our one aim in parenthood is to love our kids for exactly who they are, not who we want them to be.
For several years, a grocery store in Silver Spring, Md., displayed a poem I wrote for my mother in my school’s literary magazine. I wrote about how she taught me that red and blue popples can play together, and that Barbie doesn’t need Ken to be happy. I imagine that maybe, a girl passing through the store read that poem and saw a glimpse of herself inside. That spark of recognition – of I’m not the only one – is all I wanted as a child. I was able to find my happiness and my community, and I want every LGBTQ+ child to be able to do the same.
Joanna Hoffman was born and raised in Silver Spring, Md. She is the author of the poetry collection ‘Running for Trap Doors’ (Sibling Rivalry Press) and is the communications director for LPAC, the nation’s only organization dedicated to advancing the political representation of LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary candidates.
Books
A boy-meets-boy, family-mess story with heat
New book offers a stunning, satisfying love story
‘When the Harvest Comes’
By Denne Michele Norris
c.2025, Random House
$28/304 pages
Happy is the bride the sun shines on.
Of all the clichés that exist about weddings, that’s the one that seems to make you smile the most. Just invoking good weather and bright sunshine feels like a cosmic blessing on the newlyweds and their future. It’s a happy omen for bride and groom or, as in the new book “When the Harvest Comes” by Denne Michele Norris, for groom and groom.
Davis Freeman never thought he could love or be loved like this.
He was wildly, wholeheartedly, mind-and-soul smitten with Everett Caldwell, and life was everything that Davis ever wanted. He was a successful symphony musician in New York. They had an apartment they enjoyed and friends they cherished. Now it was their wedding day, a day Davis had planned with the man he adored, the details almost down to the stitches in their attire. He’d even purchased a gorgeous wedding gown that he’d never risk wearing.
He knew that Everett’s family loved him a lot, but Davis didn’t dare tickle the fates with a white dress on their big day. Everett’s dad, just like Davis’s own father, had considerable reservations about his son marrying another man – although Everett’s father seemed to have come to terms with his son’s bisexuality. Davis’s father, whom Davis called the Reverend, never would. Years ago, father and son had a falling-out that destroyed any chance of peace between Davis and his dad; in fact, the door slammed shut to any reconciliation.
But Davis tried not to think about that. Not on his wedding day. Not, unbeknownst to him, as the Reverend was rushing toward the wedding venue, uninvited but not unrepentant. Not when there was an accident and the Reverend was killed, miles away and during the nuptials.
Davis didn’t know that, of course, as he was marrying the love of his life. Neither did Everett, who had familial problems of his own, including homophobic family members who tried (but failed) to pretend otherwise.
Happy is the groom the sun shines on. But when the storm comes, it can be impossible to remain sunny.
What can be said about “When the Harvest Comes?” It’s a romance with a bit of ghost-pepper-like heat that’s not there for the mere sake of titillation. It’s filled with drama, intrigue, hate, characters you want to just slap, and some in bad need of a hug.
In short, this book is quite stunning.
Author Denne Michele Norris offers a love story that’s everything you want in this genre, including partners you genuinely want to get to know, in situations that are real. This is done by putting readers inside the characters’ minds, letting Davis and Everett themselves explain why they acted as they did, mistakes and all. Don’t be surprised if you have to read the last few pages twice to best enjoy how things end. You won’t be sorry.
If you want a complicated, boy-meets-boy, family-mess kind of book with occasional heat, “When the Harvest Comes” is your book. Truly, this novel shines.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
Chronicling disastrous effects of ‘conversion therapy’
New book uncovers horror, unexpected humor of discredited practice
‘Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy’
By Lucas F. W. Wilson
c.2025, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
$21.95/190 pages
You’re a few months in, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.
You made your New Year’s resolutions with forethought, purpose, and determination but after all this time, you still struggle, ugh. You’ve backslid. You’ve cheated because change is hard. It’s sometimes impossible. And in the new book, “Shame-Sex Attraction” by Lucas F. W. Wilson, it can be exceptionally traumatic.
Progress does not come without problems.
While it’s true that the LGBTQ community has been adversely affected by the current administration, there are still things to be happy about when it comes to civil rights and acceptance. Still, says Wilson, one “particularly slow-moving aspect… has been the fight against what is widely known as conversion therapy.”
Such practices, he says, “have numerous damaging, death-dealing, and no doubt disastrous consequences.” The stories he’s collected in this volume reflect that, but they also mirror confidence and strength in the face of detrimental treatment.
Writer Gregory Elsasser-Chavez was told to breathe in something repellent every time he thought about other men. He says, in the end, he decided not to “pray away the gay.” Instead, he quips, he’d “sniff it away.”
D. Apple became her “own conversation therapist” by exhausting herself with service to others as therapy. Peter Nunn’s father took him on a surprise trip, but the surprise was a conversion facility; Nunn’s father said if it didn’t work, he’d “get rid of” his 15-year-old son. Chaim Levin was forced to humiliate himself as part of his therapy.
Lexie Bean struggled to make a therapist understand that they didn’t want to be a man because they were “both.” Jordan Sullivan writes of the years it takes “to re-integrate and become whole” after conversion therapy. Chris Csabs writes that he “tried everything to find the root of my problem” but “nothing so far had worked.”
Says Syre Klenke of a group conversion session, “My heart shattered over and over as people tried to console and encourage each other…. I wonder if each of them is okay and still with us today.”
Here’s a bit of advice for reading “Shame-Sex Attraction”: dip into the first chapter, maybe the second, then go back and read the foreword and introduction, and resume.
The reason: author Lucas F. W. Wilson’s intro is deep and steep, full of footnotes and statistics, and if you’re not prepared or you didn’t come for the education, it might scare you away. No, the subtitle of this book is likely why you’d pick the book up so because that’s what you really wanted, indulge before backtracking.
You won’t be sorry; the first stories are bracing and they’ll steel you for the rest, for the emotion and the tears, the horror and the unexpected humor.
Be aware that there are triggers all over this book, especially if you’ve been subjected to anything like conversion therapy yourself. Remember, though, that the survivors are just that: survivors, and their strength is what makes this book worthwhile. Even so, though “Shame-Sex Attraction” is an essential read, that doesn’t make it any easier.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Let love and compassion guide our response to Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis
D.C. Black Pride 2025: Events, parties, and empowerment
Cuban lawmakers to consider simplifying process for trans people to change IDs
Frank Kameny’s legacy lives on
