Michael Cunningham on 'The Snow Queen'

Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham's new novel, "The Snow Queen," is set in a Brooklyn neighborhood he describes as "placidly impoverished." It's full of "daunted denizens" who run businesses that just barely get by.

At the heart of the story are the Meek brothers. The younger, Barrett, searches for love and greater meaning to his life while his elder brother Tyler is a musician struggling with a drug addiction. Living with them is Tyler's fiance, Beth, who is dying of cancer. Her unchanging condition puts the trio in suspended state that's difficult to navigate.

The Guardian calls the novel "clean and sharp as an ice crystal; a brief but profound and poetic meditation on love, death and compassion from a master craftsman of language."

Cunningham joins The Daily Circuit to discuss "The Snow Queen."