This was a good story and a realistic depiction of middle age - a realistic middle-aged marriage, realistic middle-aged sex, realistic middle-aged insomnia. I loved that he woke up at 3 am every night and I love that he took pills for it. AND vodka. ( )

Amazing writing about New York City and people. ( )

This is a powerful book, told from the POV of Peter. Peter is an art dealer, and while he's not a big time player, he loves his job. Thinks get turned upside down when his wife's brother Mizzy(short for Mistake) shows up claiming to want to clean up his act and do "something in Art". We really see the world through Peter's eyes, and I especially liked how his interior monologue was interjected into conversations so we know what he really wanted to say. ( )

I'm a Michael Cunningham fan girl. It's impossible for me to be unbiased about anything Michael Cunningham writes. I have a sneaking suspicion that I have some amount of cognitive dissonance about By Nightfall - a book that I've wanted for over a year; that I picked up and lingered over every time I was in a bookstore; that I scoured every used bookstore for; that I finally paid full price in a physical bookstore for a new copy because I wanted it that badly (paperback; I haven't lost my mind); that I derailed a vacation for in order to see Cunningham speak about at the national book fair. So, I'm a little obsessed. And I have a suspicion that I read the book that I wanted to read, rather than the book Cunningham wrote.

I loved the introspective pieces of this book. The interstitial portions where characters ordered coffee and went on train rides were Cunningham at his best - he describes the mundanity of the human condition in a way that is both honest and profound and is completely unparalleled.

I loved the concepts in this book - that we, as humans, are in love with beauty, in love with art, in love with the profound and constantly disappointed in the inability of reality to produce concrete things that live up to the expectations in our imaginations. That we cultivate the relationships that exist in our life for their symbolism, and for their reflection on ourselves and for the concepts that they engender moreso than for the actually people in them. That the people we are when we are honestly alone -- mentally, physically alone -- is not ever the person that we can be to others.

I did not love the actual plot of this book. I was bored, rather than enthralled by Mizzy. I felt that at times, the symbolism was too on the nose (seriously, a character named "The Mistake") and other times the mundanity was, well, mundane. Perhaps those feelings are apropos, given the context -- Cunningham is one of the artists he describes, striving to find beauty, to unsettle, to provoke and coming up just a little short. ( )

Imaginemos un apartamento exquisito y algo bohemio en SoHo; si asomamos la cabeza por la ventana veremos a una pareja de mediana edad que toma una comida ligera en la cocina o se acaricia en el dormitorio, sin que la mujer se moleste ya en quitarse esos calcetines de lana que tanto le gustan. Ella se llama Rebecca, él Peter Harris; llevan juntos muchos años y comparten la misma afición por el arte. La pasión de antes es ahora complicidad y todo parece presagiar que así seguirán sus días, pero de repente aparece Dizzy, el hermano de Rebecca, que tiene poco más de veinte años. El chico se instala en casa de los Harris, buscando consuelo y ayuda tras una época de confusión y adicción a la drogas. Su hermoso cuerpo, que el chico muestra con desenvoltura, es a ojos del cuñado el símbolo de la belleza pura, captada en ese momento mágico en que todo parece aun posible. Bien mirado, Dizzy es Rebecca, pero libre de los estragos del tiempo, y Peter se descubre dispuesto a gozar de nuevo, a apostar por una locura y a pagar su precio. La vida se encargará de resolver las dudas de Peter Harris, pero Michael Cunningham lo retrata aquí sin que importen sus arrugas, y consigue algo que solo saben hacer los grandes maestros: que la imperfección de un hombre, su vulnerabilidad, su poquedad, sean finalmente un elogio a lo que de más humano hay en cada uno de nosotros.