- https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119431732.ecaf0038
Cunningham, Michael
- Mar 25, 2022
- The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980–2020
- David Chase
Michael Cunningham is the author of seven novels and a short story collection of reimagined fairy tales. His fiction is distinguished by lengthy, evocative, and imagery-rich sentences and keen insight into the complex psychology of characters whose daily existences pale in comparison to the more remarkable lives they imagine for themselves. Cunningham has enjoyed his greatest popular and critical success with The Hours (1999), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Other notable works include A Home at the End of the World (1990), Flesh and Blood (1995), and Specimen Days (2005). His writings tend to emphasize character and situation over plot, and common themes include the centrality of family, the need for reinvented communities and connections, the dangers of both adhering to and resisting cultural scripts, and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of disappointment, change, and loss.
