A Home at the End of the World

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Literature!
Review: A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD introduced me to Michael Cunningham--someone who I now consider one of my favorite contemporary authors. He manages to write honestly about friendship, love, sexuality, and life; and even though the story is told in different voices, there's hardly a break in the narrative--the novel flows beautifully and keeps readers turning pages; Cunningham is a master of words. I found Jonathon's friendship with Bobby very compelling. In fact, the chapters in Part I of the novel are, I think, the best chapters; they reveal the innocence of youth between Jonathon and Bobby and captures their friendship so beautifully. I liked this book a lot because I found it easy to relate to many of the events and experiences in Jonathon and Bobby's life. It was like reading a mirror image of my own life. Novels that are able to draw up those memories and connections in readers are the best ones. One reading of this novel isn't enough; it's a novel to be read over and over again.

Rating:
Summary: Fun to read, but without any distinctiveness
Review: After reading "The Hours," I couldn't get my hands on another book by Michael Cunningham fast enough. The description on the back of this book had a sort of Oprah-esq quality to it, but I reserved my doubts and started the book. It is addictively written - for the first half of the book I was engrossed in the lives of the characters and intrigued by everyone Cunningham introduced. Sometime during their time in New York, however, I began to feel that the book had become predictable and usual. I don't think he introduces anything new in this book - the outcome is mildly obvious, and the characters start to loose their distinctiveness. I wound up feeling no concern for what became of them - no one ever seems to change or to seek any change. I lost my sympathy for and interest in these characters at the end; in a way they had become stereotypes from the 1980s (if there is such a thing). Nonetheless, I do think he can be a beautiful writer, and at times it can be a pleasure to read.

Rating:
Summary: Heartbreakingly beautiful
Review: I first read an excerpt of this novel as a short story in the New Yorker. When I saw it on a bookstore shelf after it was first published in hardcover, I snapped it up. I wasn't disappointed; Cunningham manages to take the immediacy of the short story and sustain it throughout the novel. The writing is among the most heartbreakingly beautiful I've ever read. Cunningham's imagery and the voices of his characters (the book is alternately narrated by Jonathan, Bobby, Clare and Alice) give the novel an emotional intensity that is breathtaking and, in many scenes, shattering. Definitely on my list of top 10 novels of all time.

Rating:
Summary: Good but claustrophobic
Review: Take three extremely self-absorbed people. Throw in a few parents, one lover. Speaking from the interior voices of the four main characters gives a wonderful look at how these people perceive and process the world. But even though they live in a working-class Latino neighborhood in New York, you never ever get a sense of place or that other people exist, which made me lose patience for the lost opportunity and richness. And well I guess I know a few too many people who lead the same kinds of insular lives. I stopped caring about these characters after awhile.

I also found the characterization of Bobby lame--his words in conversation with the others didn't ring right.

Michael Cunningham has great gifts with his prose--I'd be jolted by a description of someone's "moth-colored pajamas." I'm now reading The Hours and am pleased to see that he's been able to make his characters' world much less insular. This book hints at the genius of the Hours.

Rating:
Summary: Where do we belong?
Review: That's the question that all these characters basically ask themselves. What are they supposed to do with their lives? Who are they? These are all questions that we all ask ourselves as we go through our daily (usually stress-filled) lives.

I think that the author has done a fine job of creating characters that seem, well, really "real." There are basically four main characters: Jonathan, Bobby, Alice and Clare. (Although the storyline mostly revolves around Jonathan and Bobby). I found it interesting when different chracaters talked about how they see themselves and the people around them. The only real complaint I have is that the characters, when speaking from their points-of-view, sounded quite simillar in language, tone, and all that good stuff. But, the novel, in my opinion is still very much worth reading for its characters and their own unique look at life.

I'm looking forward to watching the movie version of "A Home at the End of the World," especially since Michael Cunningham (the author) wrote the screenplay. Plus, I've heard lots of good things about it.

-Ater

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, beautiful, moving novel
Review: Towards the end of this wonderful novel, Alice, mother of one of the main characters, remarks that she stayed with her feckless husband for decades because she couldn't imagine a life without her plates stacked in the corner cupboard of her kitchen. It's the little daily things that trammel us, she means, that prevent our flying free.

What Michael Cunningham accomplishes in this book is to show how much of our lives falls into that gap between our dreams and our reality. And being the writer he is, he does this deftly and subtly. This, Cunningham's first novel (or his second, if you count "Golden States", which Cunningham apparently does not), has the insight that makes "The Hours" so brilliant but not yet that book's layered complexity.

It's a beautiful read, though. Some chapters take my breath away because I am so impressed by the truth of the interactions between the characters and by Cunningham's command of his language. The prose is not flashy; there are few clever images; there are no prose-poem descriptions. But when I reach the end of a chapter, I realize that I've been moved by the words without being aware of them. Writing like that only looks easy. It's very, very hard to do.

Each chapter is told in the voice one of the characters. My only quibble with the novel, then, is that, while the points of view are distinct, the voices are not much differentiated. So, it was Cunningham's first successful novel, and he was still learning. Big deal. "A Home at the End of the World" still stands out way ahead of most.