поставлю 5. хоча і трошечки авансом, але так відчувається.

спочатку хотілося вищати від краси кожної сторінки і вайбу всіх моїх улюблених книг. далі дикий захват переріс у приємніше, рівніше та планомірніше захоплення, але все ще це дуже добре.

точно входитиме в топ-10 року, така вона незвична, насичена і тонка на деталі.

у мене мільйон закладинок в ній, і я б хотіла мати ще раз такий читацький досвід, тож))

3ª releitura de 2021

“Eu não era efeminado nem viril. Era outra coisa qualquer, completamente diferente. Havia tantas formas diferentes de beleza.”

“Tinha um talento especial para ajustar as suas expectativas às circunstâncias.”

“Adam suportaria qualquer conversa com o desconhecido fingindo uma bem-educada surdez. Eu fazia os possíveis para me mostrar calmo e seguro. Um silêncio caiu e pegou – um desses silêncios amistosos e prolongados que se abatem sobre as conversas ocasionais entre desconhecidos para permitir a todos os envolvidos regressarem, incólumes, à familiaridade dos seus próprios pensamentos.”

“O pai foi em tempos um homem bem-parecido. Mas a cara dele foi entretanto devastada pelo excesso de paciência.”

"Começo a compreender a verdadeira diferença entre a juventude e a idade adulta. Os jovens têm tempo para fazer planos e inventar novas ideias. As pessoas mais velhas têm de investir todas as energias na manutenção daquilo que já foi posto em acção."

"O momento poderá chegar para muitos de nós, a determinado ponto da nossa vida. Abandonamos a nossa velha obrigação de considerar as necessidades dos outros, entregando-nos aos seus cuidados. É uma mudança de estatuto. Tornamo-nos cidadãos de um novo reino. Embora possamos manter o melhor e o pior da nossa personalidade, já não comandamos fisicamente o nosso destino."

"Não morreria incompleto porque tinha estado ali, ali e em mais sítio nenhum."

Cunningham on ladannut kirjansa alkuu niin paljon surkeutta, että se meinaa vieraannuttaa minut heti alkusivuilta koko tarinasta. Vähän samalla tavalla kuin Yanagiharan Pieni elämä. Onneksi jatkoin kuitenkin lukemista, sillä sekä kirjan teemat että henkilöhahmot syvenevät matkan varrella.

Kirja kertoo kolmen ihmisen elämästä aina lapsuudesta kolmenkympin paremmalle puolen. Tarkastelussa ovat perhesuhteet, rakkaus, ystävyys, yksinäisyys, identiteetti...kaikki elämän isot asiat. Mistä ihminen loppujen lopuksi löytää onnen, mitäon hyvä elämä. Myös sivuhenkilöt kuten omaankiin ääneen pääsevä äiti sekä satunnaista pysyvämpi sänkytuttavuus kasvavat merkityksellisiksi.

Rakennemalliksi Cunnigham on valinnut tavan, jossa tarina etenee pala palalta aina yhden henkilö kertomana. Paketti pysyy hyvin kasassa ja toimii minusta tässä kirjassa hyvin valottaessaan eri ihmisten pohdintoja, päätöksiä ja ajelehtimisia. Kuten niin monen hyvän kirjan tämänkin tunnistan siitä, että se jäi mieleen kaikumaan vielä lukemisen jälkeenkin.

тепер одна з найулюбленіших

Читаючи роман Майкла Каннінґема "Дім на краю світу", я намагався пригадати, а коли у моєму житті були часи і події, котрі можна було б співвіднести за значенням та впливом із легендарним фестивалем "Вудсток" 1969 року?

Я спізнився на український фестивальний двіж на кілька років, але, здається, таки встиг на його найсмачніші роки — десь між 2007 та 2013: подільські "Шешори", "Підкамінь", "Свірж", "Форт-Місія", "Трипільське коло", "Славське-Рок", "Арт-Поле"... З відстані у часі тепер так очевидно, які це були світлі і безтурботні дні: наповненні подорожами, музикою, танцями, друзями, легкістю і коханням з першого погляду. Нехай тоді у нас майже не було грошей, але я міг поснідати бананом та кавою з автомата і потім цибати на танцювальних майстер-класах весь день.

Тому, коли Боббі у романі нестримно вабить до "Вудстока", коли він зачаровано дивиться на Клер, котра там була, коли вони повсякчас слухають музику Джиммі Гендрікса, Grateful Dead, Дженіс Джоплін — я дуже навіть розумію всих тих, хто народився занадто пізно, щоби застати найкращі українські роки в свідомому віці.

Але психологічна драма Майкла Каннінґема — зовсім не про фестивалі, швидше навпаки — про найпростіші, банальні, елементарні елементи побуту, якісь милі (і не дуже) дрібнички, з яких складається життя. Про те, чим ми зможемо його наповнити і як будемо проживати (його) неминучу скінченність.

Основних персонажів тут четверо, але загалом, для мене, схема їх розподілу тілом роману виглядає, як 2+1+1. Перші двоє — Боббі та Джонатан, ми знайомимося з ними ще у школі. Хлопці починають приятелювати, захоплюються одне одним і навіть стають коханцями. Боббі взагалі вже встиг хильнути лиха. Спершу він стає свідком трагічною і абсолютно дурацької загибелі рідного брата, який був його провідником у світ дорослих розваг. Згодом його мати накладає на себе руки типово американським способом - напившись піґулок, а батько починає бухати. Тому, коли хлопчик починає навідуватися в будинок свого приятеля і знайомиться з його батьками, він настільки до них прив'язується, що навіть деякий час живе у них після того, як Джонатан їде навчатися у коледж в Нью-Йорку.

Автор розповідає історію також з погляду двох жінок: Еліс — матері Джонатана, та Клер — жінки під сорок, з якою Джонатан живе в Нью-Йорку в одній квартирі. Клер та Джонатан, начебто, в якомусь сенсі одне в одного закохані, але без сексу, адже Джонатан — гей. Клер виросла в заможній сім'ї, де рано почала бунтувати, встигла  зовсім юною сходити заміж, зробити аборт, але тепер обговорює із своїм другом та співмешканцем можливість завести спільну дитину.

Історія набуває яскравіших барв, коли до цієї "парочки" приєднується Боббі, котрого Еліс мало не силоміць виперла у доросле життя і на пошуки власної долі. Кожен із учасників такого умовного "любовного трикутника" має глибокі і складні почуття до двох інших його "вершин", але найцікавіше починається, коли Клер вагітніє...

Поруч із спробами створити нестандартну сім'ю, вийшовши поза межі уявлень про сімейне життя, отриманими від батьків та інших людей, всі герої та героїні роману, включно з другорядними, гостро проживають власну скінченність разом із кінцем світу, особливо на фоні епідемії СНІДу, яка почала охоплювати США у 80-х. Гасло "Любов, мир і щастя", під яким проходив "Вудсток" у 1969 році, не лише не врятувало наш світ, воно не здатне врятувати навіть родину, де всі одне одного дуже люблять, але для щастя цього чомусь не достатньо. Сховавшись у сільському будиночку неподалік від місця, де проводився "Вудсток", Боббі, Джонатан та Клер намагаються побудувати життєздатні стосунки на непевному фундаменті з кохання та сексу (але, звісно, не всіх з усіма).

Майкл Каннінґем пише "Дім на краю світу" так тонко та гостро, що це не може не боліти, але, водночас, читаючи цю книгу, я відчував себе аж надто живим. Бо люблять, кохаються, ненавидять, страждають, тікають, зляться, сумніваються, захоплюються лише ті, хто ще живий. З часом це все, звісно, вилікує смерть, але буде чудово, якщо не сьогодні.

"You don't necessarily meet a lot of people in this world."

This is the first of Michael Cunningham's books I've read, but I will be reading all of them. He just flat gets it. By the time I was halfway through, I more or less disliked two of the three main characters, but I wasn't tired of reading about them. I wanted to figure them out. I wanted to like them and if I didn't, I wanted to understand why.

This is one of those books that you read a sentence or a paragraph or a scene and it hits you deep down, sometimes in the places where you're most insecure. (If you're someone who underlines quotations, get new pencils. Get a *box* of pencils.) There were times when I was sad or upset about something and would read another book instead because I didn't want to feel everything that this one brought up.

I'm making this book sound like a big downer. It isn't. It's exhilarating, like all the best books, because it tells you what you know is true and then makes you look at it all again.

I think I'm experiencing Cunningham Fatigue. I've read four of his novels in the last two years and they are starting to run together. He does seem to work with very similar themes in his works, something I actually like about him.

This novel reminds me a lot of his most recent novel, The Snow Queen, another story about a trio, quartet if you want to count Alice in this novel, and Liz in the other novel. (Liz is very similar to Clare, I should add). It feels like Cunningham uses his novels to work through personal experiences, like maybe there is a Clare/Liz person in his life, maybe he had a Bobby/Tyler brother figure. I know the unhappy housewife character that occurs in this novel, The Hours, and Flesh and Blood is at least partially based on his mother, who died of cancer a few years after The Hours was published. It is no wonder that The Snow Queen concerns itself with a young woman dying of cancer, and not the unhappy housewife of earlier novels. It's a beautiful thing to see an author work through the difficulties of his life through his work. And it never fails to amaze me what a light and beautiful touch he has when creating his characters.

So back to this novel. It takes place in the 1980's and centers around two childhood friends (Jonathan and Bobby) who enter into a complicated romantic threesome with a woman (Clare). One could call it a polyamourous relationship, but it's a bit more complex than that. Sex hardly factors in the equation for these three. It's more about creating the family they each want.

Each of the three characters narrate chapters in the book, with Jonathan's mother Alice (the unhappy housewife) narrating some chapters as well. Alice's POV is mostly in the beginning, when Jonathan and Bobby were kids. Clare shows up a bit later, taking over as the central female in the boys' lives. Naturally the two women do not care for each other when they do meet :-)

The characters are pretty good, especially Bobby, whose tragic losses, implied asexuality, and relentless yearning for a family make him the most interesting character in the book. I felt Jonathan and Clare lacked something in comparison. To go back to my Snow Queen comparison, the Barrett and Liz characters to which they resemble were more fleshed out.

The story-line felt a little dragged out after awhile. There are only so many pages of relationship agony one can deal with before you lose interest and empathy. The beginning of the novel was superior in that regard. The tension between Jonathan, Bobby, and Alice was more exciting than the rather mundane tension between Jonathan, Bobby, and Clare, even with their "unusual" relationship configuration.

The final pages of the book didn't work for me either. Cunningham ended his other works with such poetry, that I found myself in one of those "That's it?" moments when I turned the page to find the Acknowledgements statement.

Not a bad read, especially if you love Cunningham, but I'd recommend The Snow Queen before this one.

Perhaps one reason Shakespeare is so untouchably brilliant is that you have no idea who he is from his work. This is rarely true of novelists. Read a Fitzgerald or Hemmingway novel and there's the author himself on almost every page. No one doubts Dr Zhivago is Pasternak himself. And I could carry on with innumerable other examples. True some novelists are more elusive in their work and demand more detective work, like Henry James or Nabokov or Virginia Woolf. But when you read a number of novels by the same author you begin to recognise the same pivot and cast of characters popping up over and over again. Even Shakespeare's characters reappear in his plays. One of the fascinating things about reading several books by the same author is this growing familiarity with the limited scope of his/her world. Which is why there's often a sense that every author is telling variations on the same story over and over again. The conclusion perhaps is that in life only a handful of individuals have an impact on the formation of character and the way we see the world. Virginia Woolf's point of departure in The Waves. I've now read two Cunningham novels and started a third and have begun to feel that not only do I know what to expect from his created worlds but also that I know a lot about him, the person behind the text. In much the same way we have all built notions about the real life identity of our fellow reviewers on this site. Notions which, of course, might be miles off the mark. It's always a slightly unreal feeling to feel we know someone we've never met.

To the novel itself. I would have edited out the first chapter of The Hours. Here I would have edited out the last chapter. The penultimate chapter is a miles better ending. That said, this novel left me wanting to know what happens to the characters after the curtain comes down. Is that though a good sign? On the one hand it's a testament to how well he had me invested in them. On the other I felt he curtailed the story just as it was becoming even more compelling. As if Ferrante had ended Elena and Lina's story with My Brilliant Friend, a decent novel but hardly a masterpiece without its other three parts.

A Home at the End of the World is about an unconventional living arrangement. Two men, one gay, the other so pliant he'll try anything and an older woman. There are lulls but loads of great stuff about parenting and romantic expectation and social conditioning and on the whole it's beautifully written and thoroughly engaging.

“Want whatever you want more fiercely. Be more difficult and demanding. Or you’ll never make a life that uses you.”

There’s something about the most inspiring and meaningful novels that make them extremely difficult to review. I chalk this up to the fact that they don’t necessarily urge me to tell you what they are about. Rather, they insist that I express how they made me feel. This is a further challenge in that emotions are complex and nearly impossible to convey precisely. Michael Cunningham makes it all look so easy though. It’s as if he reads your mind, extracts the most secret and tangled thoughts, and infuses his characters with the same inner turmoil and desires. You can now look at each character and find some piece of them that is astonishingly like you. It’s all revealed right there on the page, lit up by the exquisite prose and the compelling dialogue.

“Years have passed – we are living in the future, and it’s turned out differently from what we’d planned.”

When I first had a hint of what this novel was about, I thought it sounded all so exotic and different from my own life. Well, parts of it did anyway. I figured I could relate to Alice, a woman who has a child she loves fiercely. Then the child grows and moves on. I’m in the middle of that right now, not with one but two children working towards extraordinary futures that will no longer be fully linked with my own. But then there are Bobby, Jonathan and Clare. Did Cunningham write a story about a love triangle? Well, perhaps. But this triangle has odd, shifting angles. Their relationships with one another as well as their living arrangements may be unconventional, but their humanness is not. Our hopes and expectations change; our disappointments are always there eating away at us. Something always seems out of reach, even when we think we’ve built for ourselves the life that seems ‘perfect’ just for us.

“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, to feel the sex along every nerve, to see all the movies. I’d thought the question of accomplishment would seem beside the point if I just paid careful attention to every single thing that happened.”

Each character is plagued by the age-old question of what more is out there for him or her. What do those that came before us (both the living and the dead) expect from us? What do we owe them? How can we escape the fates of others and shape a better life for ourselves? What does our home look like, and where can we find it? I don’t know if there is an answer. Except perhaps to live fully in the present, but always be prepared to reshape our future. Life is fluid, not stagnant. We can try to make of it the best that we can by keeping ourselves open to all of the bright possibilities.

“This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand.”

Прочитала заплановану книгу з челенджу 25 Books to read in 2025

This book was my introduction to Michael Cunningham, and when I finished it I cried. And then went out and bought everything he'd ever written.

I fell in love with this book. At that time in my life I could relate to its characters and their story in a unique way, but it was also Cunningham's writing: spare, lovely, gorgeously aware of minutiae, devastatingly honest. There is a sadness in his work that fills me with a profound loneliness that I find myself both overwhelmed by and grateful for.

"A Home at the End of the World" tells the story of Jonathan and Bobby, friends since their childhood in Cleveland. Thanks to various family tragedies, Bobby is damaged and strange. Jonathan, raised by a loving family, is naive and kind. The boys become friends, as close as brothers, but the friendship is quickly complicated by the their muddled teenaged libidos. They begin to experiment together sexually.

Embarrassed and confused, they lose touch for years only to reunite in New York. Jonathan is openly gay and living with Clare, an older, quirky single woman. Bobby is still lost, simply wandering. Clare and Jonathan, in the classic gay-man-straight-woman pact, have already agreed to have a baby together, but Clare and Bobby immediately become lovers and Clare quickly becomes pregnant. Pact off. Or so it seems, until the group manages to cobble together a little family and a life of the most patchwork variety.

It's become, in this "Will & Grace" era, a familiar story. But what Cunningham does with the characters is stunning. Bobby's rootlessness and desperate pansexuality in lieu of true love and nurturing is haunting. Jonathan's desire for a "traditional" life (kids, home, security) and the sadness that comes when he sees that life slipping away is heartbreaking. Clare's mix of selfishness and determined independence is compelling. Cunningham manages, beautifully, to shed new light on the old questions: how do we find home and how are we best loved? The answer, according to "A Home at the End of the World" is a refreshing one: we create it ourselves.

5.0 ⭐️