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juushikaTitle: A Home at the End of the World
Author: Michael Cunningham
Published: New York: Picador, 2004 (1990)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 343
Total Page Count: 107,445
Text Number: 310
Read Because: fan of the film, borrowed from the Corvallis library
Review: The story of a relationship between two childhood friends and a woman who enters their lives in adulthood, A Home at the End of the World is difficult to summarize because its plot is wide, rambling, and only half the point. Meandering from the childhood deaths that leave Bobby bereft, distant, and desperate for connection, to Jonathan's burgeoning sexuality and his fixation on Bobby, to the entrance of world-weary Clare and the fragile three-way relationship that forms on the basis of the shared love—but disparate sexuality—between them, the book offers constant forward motion but few concrete goals. Its goal, instead, is home—and this abstract concept creates a compelling story. The book's chapter-by-chapter headhopping is its weak point: each character has a strong external voice, but their interior monologues are near identical and unconvincing as a result. But in all other ways, Cunningham's portrayals are unflinching and precise. His characters are mundane and eccentric, intimately familiar and occasionally unlikable; the complex relationships between them are fueled by intense love but are never idealized or static. Cunningham offers moments of startling clarity, clear and sharp and painful as glass, into what it is to be a member of a family, an isolated individual connected to others in the attempt to build a home. A Home at the End of the World walks a delicate line between heartwarming and heartbreaking, and it's easy to oversell—but there is little excessive or maudlin about it, despite its brush against tragedies like the AIDS epidemic. It tempers its emotions with the discomforting mundanity of reality, and finds no easy or stable answers. If not for its moments of beauty, it would be depressing; instead, it's both and more: intimate, quiet, and compelling; a dream set within the realities of life; poignant, beautiful, painful; above all, real. It's not a book I can say I simply "enjoyed," but it is one I'm thankful to have read, and I recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
(For what it's worth, it reminds me of Mysterious Skin—partially in style, primarily in emotional resonance, although different in theme.)
(Also for what it's worth, the Publisher's Weekly review expresses my exact thoughts on this book.)
Author: Michael Cunningham
Published: New York: Picador, 2004 (1990)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 343
Total Page Count: 107,445
Text Number: 310
Read Because: fan of the film, borrowed from the Corvallis library
Review: The story of a relationship between two childhood friends and a woman who enters their lives in adulthood, A Home at the End of the World is difficult to summarize because its plot is wide, rambling, and only half the point. Meandering from the childhood deaths that leave Bobby bereft, distant, and desperate for connection, to Jonathan's burgeoning sexuality and his fixation on Bobby, to the entrance of world-weary Clare and the fragile three-way relationship that forms on the basis of the shared love—but disparate sexuality—between them, the book offers constant forward motion but few concrete goals. Its goal, instead, is home—and this abstract concept creates a compelling story. The book's chapter-by-chapter headhopping is its weak point: each character has a strong external voice, but their interior monologues are near identical and unconvincing as a result. But in all other ways, Cunningham's portrayals are unflinching and precise. His characters are mundane and eccentric, intimately familiar and occasionally unlikable; the complex relationships between them are fueled by intense love but are never idealized or static. Cunningham offers moments of startling clarity, clear and sharp and painful as glass, into what it is to be a member of a family, an isolated individual connected to others in the attempt to build a home. A Home at the End of the World walks a delicate line between heartwarming and heartbreaking, and it's easy to oversell—but there is little excessive or maudlin about it, despite its brush against tragedies like the AIDS epidemic. It tempers its emotions with the discomforting mundanity of reality, and finds no easy or stable answers. If not for its moments of beauty, it would be depressing; instead, it's both and more: intimate, quiet, and compelling; a dream set within the realities of life; poignant, beautiful, painful; above all, real. It's not a book I can say I simply "enjoyed," but it is one I'm thankful to have read, and I recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
(For what it's worth, it reminds me of Mysterious Skin—partially in style, primarily in emotional resonance, although different in theme.)
(Also for what it's worth, the Publisher's Weekly review expresses my exact thoughts on this book.)
