A Home at the End of the World - Softcover

Cunningham, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312202318 ISBN 13: 9780312202316

Publisher: Picador USA, 1998

Synopsis

Michael Cunningham's celebrated novel is the story of two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely introspective, and unsure of himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and his roomate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars. Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father Clare's child. Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move to a small house in upstate New York to raise "their" child together and, with an old friend, Alice, create a new kind of family. "A Home at the Edge of the World" masterfully depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life today.

About this title

Review:

"Lyrical . . . Memorable and accomplished." --The New York Times Book Review

"Novels don't come more deeply felt than Cunningham's extraordinary four-character study . . . The writing [is] a constant pleasure, flowing and yet dense with incisive images and psychological nuance." --Matthew Gilbert, The Boston Globe

"The story of Jonathan, Clare, Bobby, and Alice is also the story of the 70's and 80's in America--and vice versa. It is destined to last." --David Leavitt, author of The Marble Quilt

"Cunningham has written a novel that all but reads itself." --The Washington Post Book World

"Once in a great while, there appears a novel so spellbinding in its beauty and sensitivity that the reader devours it nearly whole, in great greedy gulps, and feels stretched sore afterwards, having been expanded and filled. Such a book is [this one]." --Sherry Rosenthal, San Diego Tribune

"Luminous with the wonders and anxieties that make childhood mysterious . . . A Home at the End of the World is a remarkable accomplishment." --Laura Frost, San Francisco Review

"Brilliant and satisfying . . . As good as anything I've read in years . . . Hope in the midst of tragedy is a fragile thing, and Cunningham carries it with masterful care." --Gayle Kidder, San Diego Union

"Exquisitely written . . . Lyrical . . . An important book." --Charleston Sunday News and Courier

"Cunningham writes with power and delicacy . . . We come to feel that we know Jonathan, Bobby, and Clare as if we lived with them; yet each one retains the mystery that in people is called soul, and in fiction is called art." --Richard Eder, The Los Angeles Times

About the Author:

Michael Cunningham is "one of our very best writers" (Richard Eder, The Los Angeles Times). An excerpt from A Home at the End of the World was published in The New Yorker, chosen for Best American Short Stories 1989, and featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. He is the author of two other novels, Flesh and Blood and The Hours. He lives in New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador USA
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0312202318
• ISBN 13: 9780312202316
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352