This book broke my heart. Cunningham is a modern master of the English language, and he knows exactly how to rise intense emotions without falling into the traps of sentimentality or easy pathos. It's a hard, powerful novel, centered around a dysfunctional family that has a very unique story and yet seems to be metaphoric of all families. It's really all about love, and acceptance, and tolerance.

"This is what the living do, he tells himself. We perform the little errands, and visit the stones."

Flesh and Blood was one of those books that I didn't realize I was looking for until I read it, devoured it. It was so beautiful in its humanness, in the way the characters weren't trying at all to be anything heroic or anything but what they were. It's heartbreak and it's love and it's pain and it's family and not knowing where you fall in between those categories. This is one of the best books that I've read in a while. I've finished it three days ago and I can't stop thinking about it.

I find Michael Cunningham’s writing beautiful. This book is beautiful and meaningful to me so the three stars feels a little cold, but every book by Michael Cunningham feels like a fever dream where you’re surrounded entirely by beautiful writing and the plot is completely unrelated. It’s a story driven by moments, not necessarily by character. These characters develop over the course of their life but what changes them from moment to moment is left almost completely unknown. Their motivations are obscure to the reader and often to themselves. Nobody ever knows what they’re doing, and while this can be a beautiful exploration of life itself, with characters just drifting and struggling to make sense of their world and find substantial purpose, the book is also struggling to grasp at generational trauma and poverty, and all of that needs certain clarity. If the characters themselves aren’t clear on what they’re suffering from, why they keep displacing their frustrations and torpedoing their own success, then the book ends up drifting without saying much of anything. Anyway, I still reread this book because it has beautiful language so in many ways it’s a four star book.

Sentimenti, emozioni, il sogno americano, rapporti genitori-figli. Questi sono gli ingredienti di questo libro. Aggiungete la maestranza della penna di Cunningham e il gioco è fatto. È un libro che chiede tanto al lettore: chiede empatia, partecipazione e compassione a volte. Ma è un libro che trasuda America, quell’America che ti dà tutto, quella che ti apre tutte le porte, ma anche quella che può farti cadere nel baratro, da un momento all’altro. Carne e Sangue permette ad ognuno di noi di ritrovarsi tra le sue righe, con la ricerca di sè, un pizzico di rancore verso le proprie origini e una buona dose di schiettezza.

Těžká rána spáče snícího americký sen, i tak by se možná dal jednoduše shrnout děj Cunninghamovy knihy Tělo a krev. Vlastně je to Cunningham, jakého už známe, nepřekvapí, protože už známe jeho další díla. A i když jeho příběhy pozvolna plynou, nenudí a nejsou žádnou selankou. Svým hrdinům autor dává štiplavou a někdy nahořklou příchuť a stejně tak tomu je i u členů rodiny Stassosovy, která je střebodem ságy. Cunningham sleduje osudy jednotlivých členů na pozadí událostí půlky století a ač se doba mění, nahlížení jednotlivých zúčastněných postav zůstává skoro stejné, ač i tam čas ohlazuje hrany a ostré výčnělky. Předsudky zůstávají, vzpoury dětí vůči rodičům, vůči době, také. Všudypřítomná je pak i láska ve všech možných podobách. Autor ukazuje, že americký sen se dá zbořit snadněji než hrad z karet, že nikdy nemůže zůstat stát, ač by si to mnozí zúčastnění přáli sebevíc. A to vše nám popisuje bravurním jazykem, skvělými dialogy, přičemž do vlastně obyčejných osudů dokáže dodat něco navíc, co tlačí v krku ještě nějakou dobu po přečtení.

So you think you have a dysfunctional family! Try this book on for size. It is a fascinating tale of a family which plays out over several generations. This gives the readers a real sense for how and where family dynamics come from.

It is a book that will appeal to many different groups of readers. Gay readers will embrace some of the affirming gay characters not to mention the endearing transvestite.

This is a book that speaks about love and forgiveness. This lends the book a spiritual dimension. I especially appreciated that since I am the author of a spiritually-themed novel. I am always on the outlook for books that uplift my spirit. While this book will try your emotions, it ends on a hopeful note.

If you liked The Hours, you will love this book too. The author writes prose as if it was poetry. He also has an uncanny knack for developing characters that are easy to relate to whether or not you can relate to the conditions of their lives. This book is a powerhouse. I didn't want to put it down.

Davis Aujourd'hui, author of "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude"

He left with the baby, whose imminent fit of misery had been at least temporarily checked by motion. Mary waited for the sound of the screen door sighing shut. Then, with a relief that was palpable, like tiny valves opening inside her chest and belly, she returned to the cake. Although she was not artistic, she believed she understood an artist's temperament. She understood the absorption and the urgent, almost bodily hunger for time, simple uninterrupted time in which to work. She stayed up past midnight sewing and baking, carving pumpkins, twisting leftover pine branches into wreaths. Still, there were never enough hours and there was never enough money. Almost every day when the children cried, fought, or clung to her she lost her breath, as if the sheer disorganized passage of time was sucking the wind out of her. p12

Poppa came into the mirror. He brought his size. He brought his eager, turbulent face.
"Hello ladies, how goes it?"
"I'm just wrestling Zoe's hair," Susan said. "It's the most amazing thing. It looks like hair, but then you try to get a brush through it and you see it's really something else. Wire, or something."
Poppa laid a hand on Susan's shoulder, "We got to hurry,...
"I guess there'll still be Christmas if he has to wait five minutes."
Poppa nodded and smiled. That had been the right answer.
"Found it, Momma called. "It was in the clothes hamper, for heaven's sake. I might have put it through the washing machine."
She came into the room but didn't enter the mirror. Poppa took his hand off Susan's shoulder.
"Zoe's almost ready," Susan said.
Momma came into the mirror. The air took on noisy possibilities, an electric impatience.
"Let me finish," Momma said... p66

"I can't sleep," he said.
"Yes you can." She spoke to him just the way she'd spoken to the children when they awoke from nightmares. Now, as then, she marveled at the maternal certainty she heard in her own voice. They believe I'm their mother. They believe I know what I'm doing.
"Just close your eyes," she said. "It'll happen before you know it." p90

"I don't know if you should be doing this."
"Thirty dollars, for like, twenty minutes' work. Nine more guys, and I can get myself that Harley."
"It's prostitution though."
"Man. So is being a waitress of a secretary. This just pays better."
Zoe looked at Trancas and tried to know. Was she setting herself free, or was she beginning the long work of killing herself? How could you be sure of the difference between emancipation and suicide?
"If you're going to keep doing it, be careful."
"Right," Trancas answered, and Zoe could see her dead. She could see her blue-white skin and the faint smile she'd wear, having beaten her mother, having gotten first to the wildest, most remote place of all. Having won.
p156

The navy St. John suit, she decided. And then, she started to laugh. This is what's happening, she said to herself, and she decided to think of it as funny. She decided to think of it as funny, and just that suddenly, it was. Lunch with a man who might outdress her...
Cassandra had chosen a restaurant on a street called Charles Street, in a part of the city where Mary had never been. As a younger woman, Mary had known-had insisted on knowing - only the New York of theatres and hotels, of turreted limestone rising above the calm green dangers of Central Park. Now, later in life, thanks to her children, she'd been to unspeakable sections. She'd passed among beggars and lunatics, ruined a Charles Jordan flat on a broken beer bottle, walked up flights of dingy, reeking stairs. Once, on her way to visit Zoe, she'd had to step around a turd, human, that lay like stupidity and degredation itself in the exact center of an azure-tiled vestibule. If she'd survived all that, she could survive lunch in yet another unfamiliar part of town, in the sort of restaurant someone like Cassandra would choose. This was happening. It could be funny, if you let it be. If you didn't look too hard, or think too far ahead. p284

The planet Sark is where Jamal comes from. It's the medium bright start just to the left of Orion's belt. He isn't shooting bullets at these people, because on his planet murder isn't just forbidden, it's impossible. Sarkians can't kill any more than you or I could decide to stop breathing. It's involuntary. However, when confronted by a particularly irritating individual it IS possible to zap them with a special gun that renders them invisible, and I don't mind telling you, the world is filling up fast with invisible citizens these days. They go on about their business, they go on being rude and mean and selfish and prejudiced, but no one can see them. p295

"Figuring out how he feels about you getting sick is going to be part of his life's work. Expecting him to know how he feels about it in the first five minutes indicates, well, an admirably extravagant view of reality." p316

If A Little Life and Middlesex had a baby

edit: http://nonsempreiosonodelmiostessopar...

STELLA MALATA



Titolo molto adatto a questo bel romanzo che parla davvero di carne e sangue e di carne e sangue ha il gusto.
Anche se poi probabilmente il sapore che rimane nell’anima è quello della cenere: la cenere in cui sia carne che sangue, fragili e caduchi, si trasformano.
Curioso che io l’abbia apprezzato tanto e non abbia mai letto null’altro di Cunningham, neppure il suo premiato Le ore.

È bella la storia, anche se non particolarmente originale, trattandosi della storia di una famiglia di immigrati greci in USA: il padre capostipite, Constantine, che arriva nel continente nuovo quando ha dodici anni, insegue il sogno americano, si costruisce una nuova vita, e nuove possibilità, si sposa con una donna figlia di italiani, mettono su famiglia, tre figli. Cento anni della loro vita, dal 1935 al 2035 (questo sì, aspetto che esce dalla norma).
Un padre padre padrone, burbero e violento, determinato e accaparratore, che è la quintessenza del sogno americano nel suo raggiungimento del benessere economico e sociale partendo da una posizione di povero e ignorante.



A risentirne sarà l’equilibrio domestico: la moglie Mary, desperate housewife degli anni Cinquanta, lo lascia e divorzia. E lo stesso Constantine finisce col considerare anche la prole più un bene di possesso che figli da amare. Con l’eccezione di Susan, con la quale però si spingerà ben oltre, troppo in là, nell’infido dolente territorio dell’incesto.
Susan si sposerà presto, un matrimonio irreprensibile tutto di facciata, le nasce Ben destinato a fine precoce.
Al punto che l’unico maschio, Billy, è omosessuale, avrà sempre un rapporto conflittuale col padre, e per affrancarsi dall’eredità familiare si cambierà il nome in Will. Si lega a un uomo più grande di lui e si accontenta di un modesto impiego rinunciando, quasi nascondendo, la prestigiosa laurea a Harvard.
E anche la figlia minore, Zoe, non si separa dal nido in modo indolore: la aspetta un futuro di alcol, sesso, droghe e bar notturni. Fino all’incontro con Cassandra, transessuale: un amore che porterà entrambe a contrarre l’AIDS. Nel frattempo è diventata madre di Jamal, partorito dall’incontro con un afroamericano.



Dal punto di vista di Constantine Stassos un rosario di sciagure. È come se lui fosse una forza centrifuga nel suo inseguimento di rivincita e riscossa attraverso successo e denaro che finisce con lo scagliare il più lontano da sé il resto del nucleo familiare.
Gli Stassos sono l’emblema del paese America, un esempio paradigmatico pulsante e sofferente, un seme che viene da altrove, piantato sul suo a stelle e strisce, seme duro e coriaceo che riesce ad attecchire, crescere, irrobustirsi, riprodursi, debordare, correre, fuggire, in cerca di un’identità, della propria felicità sotto qualsiasi multiforme aspetto si presenti.
Una saga di più generazioni che tra-scorrono e passano fino all’arrivo dell’anno 2035.
E che Cunningham racconta con ritmo e lingua ipnotica facendoci empatizzare con tutti i suoi personaggi, anche i più ostici come il capostipite, che sa trasmetterci vivi e vividi, palpitanti. E così succede che senza accorgersene più mi avvicinavo alla fine e più centellinavo rallentando il ritmo della lettura.


Tutte le immagini sono tratte dal film “Una casa alla fine del mondo” di Michael Mayer, basato sull’omonimo romanzo di Cunningham (2004).

I will qualify this book as unhealthy; it is the feeling it gave me from start to finish. I was not too fond of it, and I read it with a certain detachment, sometimes I didn't recognize the characters, and I didn't get attached to them either, in short, I didn't manage to fit into this book as I do it with other readers. It's blah for me.