Це історії розгублених людей, травмованих, тих які під досвідом приймають гірку іронію долі, але досі змагаються за мрії та ідеї. Це РЕАЛЬНІ перепитії життя. Тут немає лишніх сюжетних ліній, це ніби розмова декількох друзів - тут факти і почуття.

Це історія про несказані слова, невисловлені почуття та нездійснені дії. Також вона про любов - друга до друга, друга до подруги, незнайомки до незнайомця, матері до сина. Вона точно не класично-романтизована, вона про потребу, вона про страх самотності, вона про удушення та поглинання.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ох але окреме задоволення від рефлексій героїв - відвертих, дискомфортних, моторошних і по-дитячому наївних. Ти читаєш реальність, ти знаєш, що в тобі це теж є, і розумієш, що автор точно гарно плаває в своїх внутрішніх темних водах, визнає їх.

Книга несе вагомий посил - якого віку ми б не були - все ще будемо розгублені, все ще боятимемось, все ще робитимемо наосліп, все ще не розумітимемо своїх почуттів, знання так і не прийде. Але є люди, є наша самотність і є товариство, суть якого не завжди можна зрозуміти, але воно має право на існування бо просто відбувається, бо є загальнолюдською потребою.

Khi còn là một thiếu nữ hay ngay cả khi đã biết yêu tôi luôn tin rằng trên đời này vẫn tồn tại một thứ tình yêu không tình dục, đó là:  tri kỷ, tâm giao. Sau khi kết hôn tôi nghĩ rằng thứ tình yêu không tình dục không bao giờ tồn tại, cái gọi là tri kỷ, tâm giao có chăng cũng chỉ là ánh sao vụt qua trong màn đêm bất tận. Và hôm nay tôi bắt gặp cái thứ ty đó trong " Tổ ấm nơi tận cùng thế giới". Clare khao khát Bobby nhưng lại yêu Jonathan. Jonathan coi Clare như bạn tâm giao nhưng lại yêu Bobby bằng thứ ty vô cùng dịu dàng, thân thiết hơn cả tình anh em, sự đồng điệu giữa họ khiến ngay cả Clare cũng không thể xen vào. Phải chăng tình cảm đan chéo ấy giữa  Clera , Bobby và Jonathan duy trì được là bởi anh chàng Jonathan kia là kẻ đồng tính? Hay bởi bản chất con người vốn dĩ quá tham lam, họ muốn yêu người này ở một vài điểm, người kia một vài điểm, để có sự hoàn hảo như đòi hỏi của bản thân thì  họ ao ước có sự cộng hưởng lẫn nhau, một sự hài hòa trọn vẹn mới có thể làm nên một "tổ ấm" kỳ lạ, kỳ dị và kỳ diệu như vậy ? Một người phụ nữ và hai người đàn ông cảm thấy vô cùng ấm áp, hp khi cùng chăm sóc một đứa bé, luôn coi nó là đứa con chung của ba người. Một thứ ty vô cùng giản dị mà khó đặt tên, sâu sắc hơn bất cứ ty nào trên thế gian này, thứ tình cảm ấy chỉ xuất hiện khi họ được làm cha, làm mẹ.
Cuối câu chuyện để lại trong tôi một cảm giác nặng nề, day dứt... Nó thâm u như buổi sáng HN hôm nay vậy.

beautifully written. forces you to redefine your relationships with friends, lovers, family, and yourself, while at the same time proving that these relationships are undefinable.

Як написала у своєму відгуку перекладачка цієї книжки Ярослава Стріха «Загалом, якщо вам навколо тридцяти, то є шанси, що ця книжка зажене вам усі голки під нігті душі.». Так воно і є. Найкращим доказом цього твердження є те, що я пишу цей відгук о третій ночі, поки оговтуюся від того, що прочитала.

“...confusi e smarriti e privi di un piano, tormentati da un amore che non accettava di focalizzarsi in modo convenzionale”


E’ cosa banale dire che ogni vita ha un suo percorso con le sue curve e i suoi rettilinei ma altrettanto vero è ammettere che non tutti si adattano a vivere in una nicchia per quanto sia scavata a misura del proprio essere.
Ci sono persone che vivono un disagio.
Comincia con un fastidio come fosse un sassolino nella scarpa e poi man mano che si cresce si tramuta in un’indefinibile ansia che fa sentire intorpiditi, scollegati, falliti.
Bobby Morrow e Jonathan Glover sono due anime di questo tipo che incontrandosi si riconoscono e mettono in comune un bisogno, una necessità del vivere raggiungere un luogo dove il panorama avrebbe messo pace a quel vago senso di incompiutezza.
Dalla fine degli anni ’60 puntellati da una notevole colonna sonora (da Van Morrison, i Doors, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Andrix, i Jethro Tull....) al pieno degli anni ’80 con lo spettro dell’AIDS che appanna il concetto di futuro. Da Cleveland a New York.

La storia Bobby e Jonathan s’interseca con quella di Alice (mamma di Jonathan) e quella di Clare un’eccentrica coinquilina che farà la differenza...
Un coro di voci (su questo potrei fare l’unica annotazione critica per uno stile uniforme dell’opera che non differenzia le voci ma forse è intenzionale nei riguardi di un’unità su cui punta tutta la storia...) che raccontano l’incontro tra due tredicenni che diventano adulti arrivando a dirsi: ” Ciascuno di noi è l’altro nato in una carne differente.”

Pubblicato nel 1990, “La casa alla fine del mondo” è il romanzo con cui Michael Cunningham ha fatto il suo esordio.

Una storia che mi ha coinvolta tantissimo.
Superba scrittura di Michael Cunningham che dopo, “Le ore” e "Un cigno selvatico" entra definitivamente nel mio pantheon.



” Non parliamo più. Ci sono troppe cose da dire. “


[Ne è stato tratto un film nel 2004 diretto da Michael Mayer
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Una_cas...]

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.

A couple of jumbled thoughts...

I found this to be quite an introspective character focused novel. It's plot is sort used as a backdrop to the characters working through their insecurities about relationships, loneliness, and the expectations they have about their life. Not a lot happens plot wise really, it's more about what is going on within the heads of the characters.
Sometimes I was completely enthralled with them. The first half is especially engaging with the dynamic between the boys and Johnathan's mum, but I will admit it lost be a bit with the introduction of Clare, she never truly felt like a real character to me.
I also didn't like the focus one character took towards the end, it felt a bit more like introducing an 'issue' instead of the character feeling organic.

Ultimately, while this book seems to sell itself on it's unconventional relationship, to me it was more about a fear of loneliness and them trying to fix that. If I was to give this a book another title it would be 'Being lonely with other people'.

UPDATE….( below the

Superb! Not an easy read if you don't like to be sad, but a must-read despite that.

I really fucking liked this. It has lots of my favorite things in a novel: New York, suburban malaise, love, the 80s, parenting. It is the story of two boys and their families. It follows them into their adulthood where they meet the third character, Clare, and fall in love with her. The chapters are narrated by a different character, which can be annoying. I think Cunningham pulls it off. Each time a chapter started I would think 'oh good this character is really my favorite'. I loved Alice's chapters near the beginning. Like the bit where she says something like- 'and then I left the room as full of him as I had been when I was pregnant'. I did have some disappointments and questions at then end of the book, was Alice happy? how did Jonathan feel about how things turned out? and most of all, Why did Clare do what she did? I wish she hadn't, I don't think it was the right thing to do. Sometimes the intensity of emotion in this book was a bit too full on. Then again that's actually a really good thing right?

Love had seemed so final, and so dull—love was what ruined our parents. Love had delivered them to a life of mortgage payments and household repairs; to unglamorous jobs and the fluorescent aisles of a supermarket at two in the afternoon. We'd hoped for love of a different kind, love that knew and forgave our human frailty but did not miniaturize our grander ideas of ourselves.

Wow. Michael Cunningham seems to understand marriage between a man and a woman and the mother-child bond better than almost any modern writer, with perhaps the exception of John Updike.

But, given Mr. Updike's advantage, both in having been married to a woman (twice) and having been a father to four, I can't help but grant Mr. Cunningham the greater ability to imagine these relationships, having not participated in them himself.

Good reminders here: you don't need to be a man to write a man; you don't need to be a woman to write a woman. You don't need to be any ethnicity, gender, sexuality or religion to write a character of one different from your own.

You simply need to pay attention to everything around you, write every day, vomit up your own bile, and sometimes go broke, as Mr. Cunningham did, writing this novel for six years, in order to write something that others truly want to read.

And I did want to read this. I have, in fact, been disappointed that I hadn't read something else by Michael Cunningham since I read his Pulitzer winner, The Hours.

The Hours is, for me, an almost perfect novel, one I think about often, and I had nothing but excitement, starting this one. I decorated the first 200 pages with my signature purple post-it notes. . .

But, a couple of things bothered me in this early work of Mr. Cunningham's. I found myself incapable of separating the Voices of the three primary characters: Bobby, Jonathan, and Clare. They all sounded identical to me (not in their dialogue, in their Voice, their perspective). Only Alice, the mother, stood alone in having a tone I distinguished from the others.

Next issue: the ages of everyone. Every person's age in this is off, either too young or too old, for what their character represented. The math was off, too. The characters aged prematurely before they were actually old. A 56-year-old father described as “an elderly man in a polyester sport shirt” and a 39-year-old described as an “older woman in sunglasses” were frequent irritants to me. Even when I was a 17-year-old, I would not have described a 39-year-old as an “older woman,” unless it was in the context of another 17-year-old dating “an older woman,” meaning, in comparison with a much younger person.

Strangely enough, I can make another connection here between Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Updike. A reader needs to be reminded, throughout Updike's work, that his characters are in their 30s and 40s and not their 70s and 80s. I'm not sure what this is. A fear of death seeping through? A warped perception about aging? I'm not sure, but it was damn annoying.

But, then I'd come across a line like this: We had protected ourselves with silence because our only other choice was to howl at one another, to scratch and bite and shriek.

Damn. He gets it. He gets the complicated finesse between people, whether they're lovers, married partners, or a parent-child combo.

And here we are, back to the parent-child piece.

Mr. Cunningham's work has inspired a new shelf for me: Mommie Dearest. A place to put stories where the mother-child role is explored and is significant, regardless of whether it's a healthy or an unhealthy relationship.

If you have any books to nominate for my new shelf, could you please do so in the comments?

If I could give this more than five stars, I would. It’s so beautiful and touching. The characters feel very real and it’s great that the story is told from more than one perspective. It has been a wonderful reading experience.