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A Home at the End of the World
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A Home at The End of the World- Michael Cunningham
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Michael Cunningham tells the story of 2 boys who meet and grow up together through an ensemble cast of 4 narrators. The boys, who become men by half way through the book, meet when they are young and both are suffering from being part of a family that has faced a death. Jonathan is fresh, vocal, intelligent, gay and adventurous but not a fully formed person in his own mind, while Bobby feels as if he must live not only his own life but also a life for his brother who had passed away. Bobby is not vocal, able to mirror other people's needs, sexually ambiguous and often seen as intellectually slow by others. In his own narrations though, he sees himself as a being completely capable of existing in the small details of an everyday life and he does not come across as slow. We also hear narration from Alice, Jonathan's mother who also struggles to find a life she actually wants to live and Clare, a woman who had set out to live an outrageous life and finds herself needing both men to complete a true love. Although this love triangle has its drama, the drama is not what the book focuses on, rather it focuses on how we live between the world we imagine and the world we actually have created to exist in. Cunningham's ability to capture uniquely human characters and have them narrate versions of themselves without being completely transparent nor easily summed up, is wonderful. The book also deals with AIDS at a time when it is freshly impacting those in the gay communities but again, the focus is not on that drama but on the individuals and how they face death or a life with that fear.5 stars.
Mod
This was a book published in 1990 and is a story about two boys who are friends; Jonathan and Bobby. The setting is the 60s, 70s, and 80s. There is sex and drugs. Other characters are Alice, Jonathan's mother and Clare, Jonathan's friend. I can't say I was a fan because I don't like sexual details in books. The last part is the best part of the book. I thought the first part was the weakest. The Hours was a better book.
The Goodreads description tells far too much of the story without even mentioning that the first 100 pages are set in Cleveland, where Jonathan and Bobby live out their childhoods (a damaged one, in Bobby's case); but perhaps this doesn't matter because this isn't a plot-driven novel but a novel of relationship, exploring everything except romantic love. There were some beautiful expressions of life and not-love, but I didn't copy any of them out.
Rosemary, I have written a review twice and inadvertantly lost it - so I have empathy!This is a coming-of-age story of two boys growing up in Cleveland, their attachment to one of their mothers, their growing apart and then coming together again, and how they form an unconventional family. I enjoyed the cultural references, particularly of music and movies, but I felt their stories rather remotely. I was not emotionally invested in any one character. I was also faintly annoyed by Cunningham's propensity to sling two adjectives that are not quite synonymns together to try to convey an unusual description. He used the technique too many times in my opinion.
This is an interesting take on the love triangle and the traditional ideas of family. It explores friendship, love and loss as well as acceptance, moving on and the changes a child can bring to the best laid plans.
Based on the description I wasn’t really expecting to enjoy this but I was pleasantly surprised and spent a happy six days in the company of Jonathon, Bobby, Clare and occasionally Alice.
I listened to the audio version of this and really enjoyed the change in readers for each character section.
This is a book about character rather than a fast paced plot and part of the joy of reading this is watching the characters grow and change.
Based on the description I wasn’t really expecting to enjoy this but I was pleasantly surprised and spent a happy six days in the company of Jonathon, Bobby, Clare and occasionally Alice.
I listened to the audio version of this and really enjoyed the change in readers for each character section.
This is a book about character rather than a fast paced plot and part of the joy of reading this is watching the characters grow and change.
Mod
Based on the reviews I had read, I didn‘t particularly expect to enjoy this book, but I ended up invested in the characters. It‘s a story of a love triangle in which things really do seem the best when Jonathan, Bobby, and Clare are all together, yet they can never truly be happy with that unconventional decision. It‘s also a story of friendship, family, and loss.
Mod
I feel that a more appropriate title for this novel should be "The Last of the Baby Boomers' Last Dream". While most of the action (and the writing) takes place in the late 80s with spotlights from topics getting traction in that era (e.g. beginning of LGBTQI+ acceptance, AIDS), the characters (except Jonathan's mum) are wedged into a loose cliched communal living arrangement that was seen as a trend in the late 60s. I was quite engaged in the novel until the focus shifted from Cleveland to New York; after that, my interest went downhill. I still don't get why the acronym AIDS was avoided completely in the text if the author's aim was to garner acceptance and understanding for the condition; its absence felt like reinforcing the prevailing taboo surrounding it.
Fortunately, I loved the book as well. It follows the lives of adolescent friends Bobby and Jonathan who grow up in suburban Cleveland in the 70s. Bobby's family is afflicted by tragedy, and is largely taken in by Jonathan's. They experiment sexually and have an ambiguous but encompassing and beautiful relationship. Bobby befriends Jonathan's mom and learns baking and cooking from her- she smokes pot with them. There was just lots of ordinary but deeply heartwarming/wrenching stuff throughout the book.
Then it shifts to New York in the 80s. Jonathan is an openly gay writer, living with an older semi-eccentric woman named Clare who is his main emotional relationship, and who he has a baby pact with. Bobby becomes an interloper into their life, and a complex triumvirate of relationships spring up between the three. Eventually, they open a cafe in Woodstock and live as a three parent family to Bobby and Clare's biological child.
I won't spoil how it ends, but it does beautifully explore the idea of how do we define/how can we re-define family, how deeply even self-identified progressives can be secretly attached to traditional notions, and how we come to terms with mortality and the inevitable changes of life.
There's a line at the end that particularly stuck with me too, that Jonathan has about " not being something so simple as happy, but all at once present in his own life and all that entails". That really encapsulates these peak experiences where you're just aware of the simple and massive thing of being alive, and just having the strong complicated existential ache of it. This book itself really brought me there as well (naturally after that I gave it 5 stars).