The Snow Queen crawls at snail’s pace – and you wouldn’t want it any other way

For all would-be novelists whose stumbling block is that they can’t resist describing every single sensation in depth — the smell of a bedroom, the sound of a door closing, the feel of a sofa, the experience of getting in and out of a bath — and who therefore find it hard to push a plot along, Michael
Cunningham’s new novel is a masterclass.  The Pulitzer-prizewinning author of The Hours (in which three-quarters of a page is taken up with an unforgettable description of the armchair of an ill man) is a chronic over-describer. In this new novel about the lives and anxieties of two brothers in their forties, Tyler (straight) and Barrett (gay), the first hour of a weekday morning in a cramped flat in a dingy suburb in Brooklyn takes up over 90 pages, and you wouldn’t want it any other way.