Since “The House at the End of the World” (1999), Michael Cunningham has pursued a work full of nuances and subtlety. The American novelist, born in Cincinnati and crowned with the Pulitzer Prize for “The Hours”, from which Stephen Daldry made a remarkable film, is interested in the cracks, the doubts of his characters. Women, men and children that he frames again with rare precision in “Un jour d’avril”. A summit of finesse whose construction could recall that of the “Hours”, where we navigated between three places and three eras.
Here, Michael Cunningham has chosen to supervise three same days. April 5 of the year 2019, 2020 and 2021. Most of the novel is anchored in the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York. Isabel Walker and Dan Byrne live in an apartment with their two children, Nathan and Violet, aged 10 and 5. Dan had a short-lived past as a rocker. He recorded an album which did not work and is weakly trying to make a comeback. Rather than a sexy groupie, Dan preferred a “remarkable although physically quite ordinary” woman. Isabel, who keeps the pot boiling with her job as a photo editor in a chic magazine.
The fictional Wolfe
Above them lives Robbie, Isabel's gay younger brother. A sort of “man child”, he considered going to medical school before becoming a professor. Recently, Robbie created the fictitious profile on Instagram of a certain Wolfe who has 3,407 “followers” and which he feeds together with Isabel.
Cunningham shows his art of stage and dialogue, his way of moving
Garth, Dan's brother, also gravitates around them. This artist is looking to make a name for himself and maintain a relationship with Chess. A woman who teaches Edith Wharton to her students and with whom he had a baby, Odin, because she wanted a child but not from an anonymous donor…
The confinement
With his trademark delicacy, Michael Cunningham takes us from one of his protagonists to another. Everyone will go through the ordeal of confinement while continuing to struggle with the bumps of existence. Along the way, the author of “Crépuscule” shows his art of the stage and of dialogue, his way of moving people by describing Isabel isolating herself to listen to Brahms' Requiem. Or the couple she forms with Dan sinking into monotony and wondering what to choose between haddock and chicken for dinner.
In addition to New York, “Un jour d’avril” allows you to travel to Iceland. Where Robbie leaves, taking a copy of “Mill on the Floss” by George Eliot. The importance that Michael Cunningham gives to Nathan, a young boy obsessed with the film “Rock Academy”, and to Violet, a kid who has visions, is undoubtedly not insignificant. “One Day in April” perhaps ultimately seeks, above all, to answer the question posed by Robbie: “Do you really believe that we ever truly survive our childhood?” »
“An April Day” by Michael Cunningham, translated from English (United States) by David Fauquemberg, ed. Seuil, 320 p., €22.50, ebook €15.99.
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