New Essay in 'The Metropolitan Review'

On surviving childhood in Michael Cunningham's "Day".

Hi folks,

I’m incredibly proud to say that today I’m published by

The Metropolitan Review

. I’ve written a piece on Michael Cunningham’s 2024 novel, Day, and what it has to say about surviving our childhoods, George Eliot fan-fiction, and “how anyone could write a contemporary novel without addressing the Covid pandemic”.

As you’ll read, I wasn’t totally convinced by the book, especially not by Cunningham’s answer to that last question, and I don’t hold back on where the novel fails. But I don’t think Day is an absolute failure. Like everything Cunningham has written, it has sparks of genius flashing even in its dimmest pages.

So, this week’s essay can be found here:

The Dog Days of Covid

Thanks for reading. See you back here soon in the digital pages of Volumes.

Matthew