A Home at the End of the World (Michael Cunningham)

I was disappointed in this, Michael Cunningham's first novel, before his Pulitzer Prize winning The Hours. I suppose I just like The Hours too much. I idolize it, worship it. I love the interaction between the three characters and the thread of Virginia Woolf running throughout. It was play, it was fun, it was a game of marbles with characters and (lyrical) descriptions but with depth in every action, in every clack of those marbles. In fact, I never saw the movie version, no matter who and their mother tells me how good it is, because I don't want to ruin my own idea of the novel, a fragile little bubble in my head that dazzles me with it's soapy, shining reflection of light. I'd like to keep it exactly as is.

This novel, on the other hand, is not bad by any means. It's interesting but dull, done and done again. The story of three people (and one of their mother's too but in an offhand, on and off way) who make their own sort of dusfunctional family. A gay man, his female best friend, and the gay man's childhood buddy (who was his first lover but then become's the woman's). They have a child together and attempt to raise it as a threesome, rejecting traditional notions of family to create their own "Home at the End of the World." I know, I know, you've heard that somewhere before, right? How about when Jennifer Aniston did it in Object of My Affection or when Madonna gave it a try in The Next Best Thing? I mean, if you are going to go into territory that has been explored my such, ahem, geniuses, you at least need to riff off of what they did. Take what has been done and either make fun of or build off of it. No. This book just did the trite thing. Oh, and threw in the AIDS epidemic to boot. Yay! All in all, a fun read. But nothing like The Hours, not in the same league as The Hours, and obviously before Cunningham truly found his voice and style in The Hours. Next time I try his work, I will pick up his collection of interlaced short stories that he wrote post Pulitzer, Specimen Days.