Cunninghams premise is almost as old as God, who once confronted Moses in the form of a burning bush. But nowadays such annunciations tap on the door of a culture deeply skeptical of divine theatrics. Signs and wonders are simply misinterpreted natural phenomena or symptoms of psychological illness, arent they? Novelists Alan Lightman and Joshua Max Feldman, among others, have explored the way intimations of spirituality can disrupt the equilibrium of our rational world, but such considerations are rare. As Carlene Bauer writes in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, The literary novel, current American edition, does not seem to be where we go to work out our relation to the numinous.

The Snow Queen takes its title from one of Hans Christian Andersens fairy tales, which might suggest Cunninghams regard for the substance of things not seen. And yet a spirit of agnosticism or at least pitiful tolerance allows the mystery of what Barrett saw to float over this story. Like any intelligent 21st-century man, Barrett knows all about satellites and cortical migraines and the aurora borealis, but he also knows what he felt in Central Park: As surely as he was looking up at the light, the light was looking back down at him. No. Not looking. Apprehending. . . . He felt the lights attention.

Cunningham has created a small group of sophisticated New Yorkers thirsty for a miracle. Barretts latest humiliating breakup arrives as hes climbing down the ladder of success. Though allegedly brilliant, he has been reduced to selling clothing and living with his brother, Tyler, in a burned-out neighborhood where even the criminals have lost their ambition. Tyler, meanwhile, is a musician a bartender, really whos determined to give up cocaine after just one more hit. Hes rushing to write the perfect wedding song for his fiancee, Beth, whos dying of cancer. More depressing: George W. Bush is about to be reelected.

Whos to say that God wouldnt give this sad little family a hint of benediction? After all, revelation is offered only to those too poor and lowly to be considered candidates. Barrett sees it in the sky. Tyler feels it one morning while standing naked at the window looking down on the street:

Outside, the snow shifts with a shift in the wind, and it seems as if some benign force, some vast invisible watcher, has known what Tyler wanted, the moment before he knew it himself a sudden animation, a change, the gentle steady snowfall taken up and turned into fluttering sheets, an airy map of the wind currents; and yes are you ready, Tyler? its time to release the pigeons, five of them, from the liquor store roof, time to set them aflight and then (are you watching?) turn them, silvered by earthly light, counter to the windblown flakes, sail them effortlessly west into the agitated air thats blowing the snow toward the East River (where barges will be plowing, whitened like ships of ice, through the choppy water); and yes, right, a moment later its time to turn the streetlights off and, simultaneously, bring a truck around the corner of Rock Street, its headlights still on and its flat silver top blinking little warning lights, garnet and ruby, thats perfect, thats amazing, thank you.

Regardless of your theological position on signs and wonders, that voice, Cunninghams inimitable style, is the real miracle of The Snow Queen. Sentence by sentence and thats just one of them above he moves across the surface of these pages like some suave, literary god. Behold how he swoops in and out of Tylers point of view, breaks the fourth wall, drops ironical quips, mocks and comforts in the same phrase.

Its remarkable, yes, but is it enough to offer salvation to this languid plot? Like good Calvinists, readers will have to take that on faith. The vicissitudes of Barretts love life and the high-stakes fluctuations of Beths health offer a little movement, but Cunningham seems determined to make sure that every momentous action takes place between the chapters rather than during them. Again and again, were let in only after the drama is over.

Such reservations sound sacrilegious given Cunninghams lovely style and flashes of psychological discernment. He writes so wisely about the cruel taunting of remission and the way illness both deepens and frays romantic relationships, endowing the dying with a kind of security and purpose that healthy people crave. His portrayal of the once-blessed Meeks brothers, raised in expectation of fame and riches theyll never attain not even close is full of affecting pathos.

But whats gained by having another dim-witted Adonis wander around this novel with his frank and uncaring beauty . . . his heedlessly perfect body? This is the same pinup boy-toy we saw in Cunninghams previous novel, By Nightfall, though he was more central to that plot. Here, as one of Barrett and Tylers pretty acquaintances, hes just a catalogue hunk, and even the sexual energy inscribed on these pages looks like the faint impression left under eight sheets of carbon paper.

Thematically, too, The Snow Queen eventually reveals itself to be insufficiently ambitious. How many times have we already heard the depressing sermon about overeducated, underemployed New Yorkers bumping up against the disappointing limits of their lives? For all his stylistic elegance, Cunningham doesnt offer the theological sophistication and spiritual insight that, say, Marilynne Robinson might bring to the existential questions this novel poses. And so The Snow Queen struggles to rise higher than its characters grasping efforts to reach the divine. Were left with beautifully articulated ironies and sighs.

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Book World: Michael Cunninghams heavenly style rules in The Snow Queen