A Home at the End of the World

4.5 Stars’Once our father bought a convertible. Don’t ask me. I was five. He brought it and drove it home as casually as he’d bring a gallon of rocky road. Picture our mother’s surprise. She kept rubber bands on the doorknobs. She washed old plastic bags and hung them on the line to dry, a string of thrifty tame jellyfish floating in the sun. Imagine her scrubbing the cheese smell out of a plastic bag on its third or fourth go-round when our father pulls up in a Chevy convertible...He saw it parked downtown with a For Sale sign and decided to be the kind of man who buys a car on a whim.’ - Bobby’I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be a beauty.’ - JonathanThis is a story about love, about belonging - or not belonging, or perhaps not belonging any one place, to any one person, anything. It is about belonging everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Having the freedom, or audacity, to change your mind along the way, of what you want...or perhaps of wanting the flexibility to have what you want without that cancelling out your other wants. Not in the sense of “I’d like a hamburger and a milkshake, but in choosing a life, a person - or persons - you want to share your life with, intimately.’This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand.’A Bob and Clare, and Clare and Jonathan, and so on kind of story.This is also a story about loss, family, love, friendship and devotion.Clare is around ten years older than Bob and Jonathan, she feels the window of opportunity to fulfill her desire to have a child closing day by day. Clare had always wanted a settled life and a shocking one. Her life one of nursing flocks of undisciplined wishes that collided and canceled each other out.’Hope takes on a fragility. Think too hard and it’s gone. I was surprised by the inner emptiness I felt, my heart and belly swinging on cords. I’d always been so present in the passing moments. I’d assumed that was enough - to taste the coffee and the wine...Soon there would be an important addition to the list of things I was too old to do.’ - ClareAlthough there are various locations in this story, the main story takes place in NYC, followed by upstate New York, not far from the Woodstock, where Clare was during the 1969 Festival. They buy a somewhat ramshackle old house that needs work, and then a small restaurant which is run by the men.And life is good, although it takes on a somewhat day-by-day routine of the necessary things in life, leaving little time left in the day for fulfilling leftover wants or dreams.They’d hoped for more, life was good, but was missing some of the things they’d envisioned. Their visions for their future had been formed in the optimism of their former, more youthful years, and their belief that they would not change as their parents had.Years ago, the year it was published, I read Michael Cunningham’s The Hours - years ago - and was swept away into those pages, and his prose. The stories aren’t really comparable, and even though this story didn’t flow quite as fluidly as The Hours, the prose is as lovely, and the story is nearly as engaging.

Michael Cunningham I read without referring to reviews - no matter what he writes. This started out as a sure-fire, five-star selection. Cunningham's writing style is superb. Such insight! Such definitive prose! But I got bogged down a bit during the middle. Got tired of Clare's actions and Jonathan's inability to get his life going. Well, I guess I shouldn't blame the author for that. Undoubtedly that's how he wanted it to happen. So, I'll give Clare and Jonathan about three stars, and make that up with Bobby and Alice, both of whom, in their own ways, seem to be survivors.What about plot and character? The novel definitely has a viable plot, even though it meanders somewhat aimlessly over several decades and multiple destinations. The ending seems true to the plot, i.e., you don't really know where the characters are going, which sums up the book nicely. Meanwhile, the individual character development is fine. The reader gets to know what the main characters are doing, although not necessarily why or what their activities and choices add up to. Once again, that's no doubt what the author wants to convey. The venues, as depicted by the author, are all dreary - Cleveland, Arizona, New York. Not exactly Reagan's shining city on a hill. But that fits in well with what the author seems to be saying about life.I lived through the decades depicted, and it more or less shocks me to think I might have been like either Jonathan or Bobby. Not that they were evil, or even nonentities, or that my own life has been an uninterrupted series of highs, but their lives seemed so humdrum and unfocused.

Michael Cunningham seems assured a top position in the Important Writers of this Century. Having won the Pulitzer Prize for THE HOURS and spawning one of the most respected films of the year makes us wonder if this level of literary magnificence can be sustained. And that is a fine reason for returning to his earlier works to see if the seeds of greatness were well planted. The answer: unquestionably! A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD may have taken Cunningham years to write, but what a polished novel those years of patience and care produced!Cunningham is first a writer of astounding gifts: he can spin brief phrases describing a fraction of a moment of light or scent or air or internal feeling that are so beautifully crafted they blink like diamonds on field of story. His vocabulary is eloquent, his ability to paint characters is rich and uniquely his own, and his craft of storytelling is mesmerizing."A HOME......" deals with the yearning for finding a sense of family and a sense of love and meaning in the world we have inherited and are propagating. His style?: each chapter is named for one of his characters and the story progresses from the different views of these interlocking people. Very simply stated, Cunningham creates Bobby (the lone survivor of a family destroyed by the first born son's death), Jonathan (likewise a survivor of a family who finds a tolerable existence after a stillborn death of a potential sibling), and Clare (an escape artist from a family of means from whom she flees into a world of drugs and sex and loss of connectedness) - and from this melange we study three families and learn just what the term 'family' denotes. Bobby is internally complex and bonds with Jonathan in highschool in what for Jonathan is a homosexual craving and for Bobby is a deparate need for love at any cost. After highschool in Cleveland, Jonathan moves to New York for college and for embracing the lifestyle he cannot find in Cleveland, and pairs with Clare in a sexless coupling that is glued together by mutual need and love. Bobby stays in Cleveland, lost, but bonds with Jonathan's parents (Alice and Ned), becoming a cook and restauranteur. When the effects of Ned's asthma require moving to Arizona, Bobby moves to New York, moving in with Jonathan and Clare, and the final family is born. The intricacies of this menage a trois relationship open the doors for each of the characters to discover their real needs. To tell more would not be fair to the new reader. Suffice it to say that the story Cunningham creates touches nerves and creates chords of identification that make this novel compelling and fascinating to the final page. "...we owe the dead even less than we owe the living, that our only chance of happiness - a small enough chance - lay in welcoming change." Food for thought and certainly a seed of style that makes THE HOURS so magnificent a book. Richly recommended.

I really enjoyed this book. So observant and steeped in emotional intelligence.

and I indeed loved this book.

Finally, a quality, beautiful novel of realistic gay characters.Gay novels, or novels with gay characters, tend to be almost exclusively fatal: at least one of the couple dies, or the couple implodes because of the gay failings of one of the characters. Whether this is internalised homophobia of gay authors, the lived experience, or the demands of a hetronormative publishing world that requires deviants to be punished. The lives of the characters here are complex and complicated but ultimately life affirming. I loved the read and always recommend it to my downbeat gay friends. I've gine on to read many of Cunninghams novels, Flesh and Blood is especially good.

読みやすいものであるかもしれません。まだ読み終わってはいないですが、今までのところは読書を楽しめるものでした。読解力は養えるものであると思いますが、個人に英語の表現力が備わるものかどうかはわかりません。読み進めるに至って、その国の文化的価値が当人に備わっていると、読んでいて楽しいものかもしれません。

I suggest not reading any previews of the storyline. I read this title/author in someone's critique about another wonderful book by Josh Kilmer-Purcell "I'm not myself these days" as being part Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World & early works of David Sedaris (all of which I've read) . Hence, I discovered a rare talent, a writer who uses no wasted words, literally, crafts his writing. Many times I paused in complete appreciation & awe. Many times I laughed uproariously, or felt like I was reading good quality chocolate, seratonin to the brain. Putting all aside to read, be immersed.The story builds, as do the three main characters develop an unconventional yet believable connection. Don't pass on this book, it's terrific!