SPECIMEN DAYS

Narrator Alan Cumming manages to bring these three Walt Whitman-related stories to life with conviction and consistency--despite the centuries that separate the characters. A boy, guided by Whitman, hears his dead brother speaking through machines. Young suicide bombers, guided by a woman claiming to be Whitman, hug their victims before detonating. An android programmed with the poetry of Whitman seeks to escape Earth with a lizard-like alien. Cumming wisely focuses on the power of storytelling to keep the material--filled with Whitman symbology--cohesive. This is another bold work from author Michael Cunningham, who provided a similar homage to Virginia Woolf in THE HOURS. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 05/ JAN 06]