Lucas Catherine Simon: three characters meet time and again in the three linked narratives that form ‘Specimen Days’. The first a science fiction of the past tells of a boy whose brother was ‘devoured’ by the machine he operated. The second is a noirish thriller set in our century as a police psychologist attempts to track down a group of terrorists. And the third and final strand accompanies two strange beings into the future. A novel of connecting and reconnecting inspired by the writings of the great visionary poet Walt Whitman Specimen Days is a genre-bending haunting ode to life itself – a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today
