The Snow Queen

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of The Hours

"Michael Cunningham's best novel in more than a decade."-Megan O'Grady, Vogue

It's November 2004. Barrett Meeks, having lost love yet again, is walking through Central Park when he is inspired to look up at the sky; there he sees a pale, translucent light that seems to regard him in a distinctly godlike way. At the same time, in Brooklyn, Barrett's older brother, Tyler, is struggling to make his way as a musician-and to write a wedding song for Beth, his wife-to-be, who is seriously ill. While Barrett turns unexpectedly to religion, Tyler grows increasingly convinced that only drugs can release his creative powers, and Beth tries to face mortality with as much courage as she can summon.
Michael Cunningham follows the Meeks brothers as each travels down a different path in his search for transcendence, demonstrating a singular understanding of what lies at the core of the human soul. Beautiful and heartbreaking, comic and tragic, The Snow Queen proves again that Cunningham is one of the great novelists of his generation.

Michael Cunningham is the author of six novels, including A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as Land’s EndA Walk in Provincetown. He lives in New York.