By NightfallA Novel

As much a puzzle of a marriage as a portrait

As a specialist in domestic dramas (A Home at the End of the World, The Hours) Michael Cunningham has a way of elevating dinner table conversation to Italian opera. Set in New York’s SoHo sometime in the mid-aughts, By Nightfall is the story of Peter and Rebecca Harris, an art dealer and magazine editor, respectively, who represent the staid yuppiedom we’re familiar with from Mia Farrow-era Woody Allen movies. Cunningham’s outsized references to Fellini and Thomas Mann help stir the Creuset, making for a page-turner that’s hard as hard to resist as a 2 a.m. Thai food delivery or a designer sample sale.

As the Harrises evaluate their long marriage, the already shaky foundation of their household is rattled by the arrival of Rebecca’s brother, Ethan, an attractive Yale dropout and drug addict in his early 20s. “Mizzy,” as the couple secretly refers to him (short for “The Mistake” – he was born much later than his siblings) serves as a replica of Matthew, Peter’s much worshipped older brother who died young. Now Peter’s faun-like gaze is trained on the young man camped in the spare bedroom. As with observing a piece of fine art or contemporary curio, Cunningham asks us to question the façade – whether it’s a wealthy collector’s Connecticuthome or a man’s love for his wife. Narrated by actor Hugh Dancy and peppered with Peter’s neurotic inner dialogue, By Nightfall is as much a puzzle of a marriage as a portrait.