The New York Times bestselling novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours Michael Cunningham's luminous novel begins with a vision. It's November 2004. Barrett Meeks, having lost love yet again, is walking through Central Park when he is inspired to look up at the sky; there he sees a pale, translucent light that seems to regard him in a distinctly godlike way. Barrett doesn't believe in visions-or in God-but he can't deny what he's seen. At the same time, in the not-quite-gentrified Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, Tyler, Barrett's older brother, a struggling musician, is trying-and failing-to write a wedding song for Beth, his wife-to-be, who is seriously ill. Tyler is determined to write a song that will be not merely a sentimental ballad but an enduring expression of love. Barrett, haunted by the light, turns unexpectedly to religion. Tyler grows increasingly convinced that only drugs can release his creative powers. Beth tries to face mortality with as much courage as she can summon. Cunningham follows the Meeks brothers as each travels down a different path in his search for transcendence. In subtle, lucid prose, he demonstrates a profound empathy for his conflicted characters and a singular understanding of what lies at the core of the human soul. The Snow Queen, beautiful and heartbreaking, comic and tragic, proves again that Cunningham is one of the great novelists of his generation.
"Regardless of your theological position on signs and wonders, that voice, Cunningham's inimitable style, is the real miracle of The Snow Queen. Sentence by sentence . . . he moves across the surface of these pages like some suave, literary god. Behold how he swoops in and out of Tyler's point of view, breaks the fourth wall, drops ironical quips, mocks and comforts in the same phrase . . . He writes so wisely about the cruel taunting of remission and the way illness both deepens and frays romantic relationships, endowing the dying with a kind of security and purpose that healthy people crave. His portrayal of the once-blessed Meeks brothers, raised in expectation of fame and riches they'll never attain--not even close--is full of affecting pathos." -Ron Charles, The Washington Post "Michael Cunningham's resonant new novel . . . is arguably [his] most original and emotionally piercing book to date. It's a novel that does not rely heavily on literary allusions and echoes for its power--a story that showcases the author's strengths as a writer . . . while creating a potent portrait of two brothers and their urgent midlife yearning to find some sense of purpose and belonging . . . He artfully allows the reader direct access to [his characters'] hearts and minds by using his gift for empathy and his own brand of stream of consciousness . . . A the same time, Mr. Cunningham provides an impressionistic portrait of Brooklyn, circa 2004, and of the East Village, some four years later . . . These snapshots attest to his ability to give us an intimate sense of his characters' daily lives, while situating their hopes and dreams within the context of two moments in history already slipping by." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "[T]he pursuit of transcendence in all kinds of forms--music, drugs, a McQueen minidress, and those things less tangible but no less powerfully felt--drives Michael Cunningham's best novel in more than a decade, The Snow Queen." -Megan O'Grady, Vogue "Michael Cunningham writes some of the most beautiful prose in contemporary American fiction, and his gorgeous way with words is on full display in his new novel, The Snow Queen . . . The author is tender with his characters even when they're obnoxious or dumb. And he's particularly tender with Tyler, a self-deluding drug addict who is also that quintessential Cunningham protagonist, the artist struggling with his muse. As in his Pulitzer prize-winner, The Hours, Cunningham writes with specificity and intimate knowledge about the desire 'to make something ... marvelous, something miraculous.' Failure is not a threat inevitably overcome; it happens. The wedding song Tyler composes for Beth is, he knows, 'more sentimental than searing.' His wincing analysis of the song's weaknesses gives a much truer portrait of the artistic process than the gauzy romanticism we usually get. Art is Cunningham's deepest faith, the Big Subject he approaches with a passion and conviction . . . There aren't any final answers in Cunningham's hauntingly inconclusive novel, which fittingly enough, closes with a question." -Wendy Smith, The Daily Beast "Cunningham weaves an ode to the immortal city of New York and its artistic souls and lost citizens. His books remind us that the mythologies we imagine about our lives stem from seemingly ordinary moments and seemingly ordinary people . . . With elegant prose that peeks into the most private thoughts of his characters, Cunningham challenges the reader to imagine a pervasive, indifferent god--if any god even exists." -Allie Ghaman, The Washington Post "Like By Nightfall (2010), Cunningham's elegant and haunting new novel examines the complex dynamics among a couple and a brother. In this configuration, Barrett Meeks, a poetically minded man in his late thirties who has just been dumped by his most recent boyfriend via text message, shares a Brooklyn apartment with Tyler, his older musician-bartender brother, and Beth, Tyler's gr