A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham

Reviewed by Lauren Schmidt, 2/20/06

First of all, this book has the most spoilerful blurb on the back that I've ever seen. Don't read it unless you want to know basically the whole plot ahead of time.

This book is the story of two boys who meet while growing up in Cleveland, and the friendships and families that form between and around the two of them at different points in their lives. Family -- both from a child's perspective and from that of an adult -- is a major theme in the novel, as are friendship, parenting, love and sexuality. I enjoyed the book's exploration of relationships, both conventional and un-. However, none of the characters ended up reflecting as deeply on these themes as I think I have during my own life, and I was frustrated with some of their personal choices which seemed due to a lack of thought and communication on their part. I usually feel that way about fictional relationships, though, and these ones were certainly more interesting relationships than many.

I was sucked into this book right away. The writing is very beautiful without dragging or distracting from the story, and the story moves right along and stays pretty interesting and unpredictable all the way through (though overall I preferred the earlier bits of the novel where the main characters were younger). But there was a strange disconnect between my feeling about the chapters -- each of which was individually very enjoyable -- and the book as a whole, which didn't hang together for me quite as well. The narration switches between different characters throughout the story (which works nicely, for the most part), but so much time passes between our glimpses into each character that I never got a solid feel for how all the characters thought and felt about things. Consequently, when the narration wasn't following a particular character, she or he was rather opaque and mysterious, and the narration never went back later to fill in those gaps in my understanding. Some of the characters remained more of a mystery to me than others, but overall the chapters felt a little too much like floating glimpses into various lives, A lot of events surprised me -- or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I didn't even know what to anticipate enough to know what to be surprised by and what not.

The general way the book ended was also unsatisfying for me, in that there were various big questions left unanswered in the lives of several of the characters which I would have liked to have known the answers to. That's clearly a matter of personal taste, though. I hate being left with various big questions hanging around in the lives of lots of characters. But I guess most anywhere you end a realistic story, that's going to be the case. I just prefer a possibly more artificial wrap up, where you have a sense that all the important matters are settled for the moment, and you know where everything is headed.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book all the way through, and I think I read it in about two days (pretty quick, for me), but it didn't leave me feeling 100% satisfied afterward. I would recommend it, however, to people who like relationship-focused fiction, carefully crafted writing, and occasionally frustratingly enigmatic characters (okay, couldn't resist that last dig). I'd like to read some of Cunningham's other books -- maybe even The Hours, which I really didn't like very much as a film.