By Nightfall

Hardcover, 238 pages

English language

Published Aug. 5, 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:
978-0-374-29908-8
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OCLC Number:
555656344

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4 stars (9 reviews)

The whole course of one’s life really can change in an instant.

Peter is forty-four, prosperous, the owner of a big New York apartment, a player in the NY contemporary art dealing scene. He has been married to Rebecca for close on twenty years. Their marriage is sound, in the way marriages are. Peter might even describe himself to be happy.

But when Mizzy, Rebecca’s much younger brother, comes to stay, his world is turned upside down. Returning to their New York flat after work one day, Peter sees the outline of Rebecca in the shower. But when he opens the shower door, it is Mizzy he comes face to face with. From that moment on, Mizzy occupies all of Peter’s thoughts. His fascination with him is erotic but not exactly sexual. Without ever really falling out of love with his wife, he tumbles into love with her brother, and …

7 editions

Review of 'By Nightfall' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

The thoughts and, hence, life of Peter Harris, art-dealer in a 20-yearish marriage which drags on. His wife's strange and formerly drug-addicted brother, Mizzy - short for The Mistake - comes to live with them for a while in order to find out what he wants from life.

That's the base. What follows is an inert portrait of a man's thoughts and feelings as sifted through a 40-year-old male living in New York City, affluent working for the often wealthy.

I loved how Cunningham has made the book very easy to read and at the same times makes it feel effortlessly written, how he evokes many thoughts in me by using just a few words at describing something, how he makes the characters in the book believable and...while I think Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" was a failure as far as endless research goes, this is interesting and captivating, if …

Review of 'By Nightfall' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The thoughts and, hence, life of Peter Harris, art-dealer in a 20-yearish marriage which drags on. His wife's strange and formerly drug-addicted brother, Mizzy - short for The Mistake - comes to live with them for a while in order to find out what he wants from life.

That's the base. What follows is an inert portrait of a man's thoughts and feelings as sifted through a 40-year-old male living in New York City, affluent working for the often wealthy.

I loved how Cunningham has made the book very easy to read and at the same times makes it feel effortlessly written, how he evokes many thoughts in me by using just a few words at describing something, how he makes the characters in the book believable and...while I think Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" was a failure as far as endless research goes, this is interesting and captivating, if …

Review of 'By Nightfall' on 'LibraryThing'

4 stars

The thoughts and, hence, life of Peter Harris, art-dealer in a 20-yearish marriage which drags on. His wife's strange and formerly drug-addicted brother, Mizzy - short for The Mistake - comes to live with them for a while in order to find out what he wants from life.

That's the base. What follows is an inert portrait of a man's thoughts and feelings as sifted through a 40-year-old male living in New York City, affluent working for the often wealthy.

I loved how Cunningham has made the book very easy to read and at the same times makes it feel effortlessly written, how he evokes many thoughts in me by using just a few words at describing something, how he makes the characters in the book believable and...while I think Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" was a failure as far as endless research goes, this is interesting and captivating, if …

Review of 'By Nightfall' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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.