The reviews on this one weren't as food as some of Cunningham's other novels, but it remains my favorite. The first time I read it I read the last page, closed the book and my eyes for a few minutes to just let it all wash over me, and then I opened it back up to the first page and started it al...
I liked this book, for the most part, but I can see everyone's problems with it. It's a rather self-indulgent and, often, pointless exercise in close observation of three or four people I had a hard time really caring about. Cunningham uses parenthetical phrases to the point of distraction, and v...
I loved the first line of the book. And I enjoyed Barrett as a character, settling into his non-greatness and eventual comforting love with Sam. But the other characters annoyed me beyond measure. Beth is either dying or wooden or dead; she doesn't get much depth here. Liz is painted as a somewha...
I'm creating a new category of audiobooks based on this book: ones I'll enjoy listening to while I'm cooking or driving, doing other things. The language is so lovely, but can I bear to truly follow all the Brooklyn-ness of it? More beautiful, insecure, introspective men spending their narration ...
Not at all what I was expecting.I was disappointed in the sense that nothing happenedthe problem arises and the solution for it was what put the couple in that situation.Nobody truly put an effort to change.The ending was a cop out ending.Much like gone girl by Gillian Flynn.It left me feeling a...
”We throw our parties; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or ...
I knew little of Michael Cunningham’s work (I just knew that he wrote The Hours which was an Academy Award-winning film my parents loved) so I had no fixed expectations. I gave myself four days to finish this book but managed to do so in three days. That’s how captivating it was. Cunningham’s exp...
A Home at the End of The World is a love story. A convoluted, unbalanced, discombobulated love story, but a love story nonetheless.Jonathan meets Bobby in the eighth grade, and to call what forms between them a simple friendship would be to apply a cheap misnomer. They bond over weed, music, ang...
Lovis Corinth: Self Portrait as Howling Bacchant, 1905, Insel HombroichThere is a haunted dread in the eyes of this bacchant. That howl - more distress than joy. Mania, frenzy, delirium; a Dionysian letting go. This is the mental picture that furnished my mind as I read of Gustav von Aschenbach. ...
Cape Cod is on the North West fringe of America, and Provincetown is on the very edge of Cape Cod. This isolation means it is a place which has attracted those on the periphery of American society too; artists and writers have made their homes here, and hosts a large gay and lesbian community too...
The post at my blogI’m not as enthusiastic about The Pilgrim Hawk as the reviewers I linked to in my post. It’s a well-told story working on several layers, especially when noting the focus of the subtitle (“A Love Story”) is secondary to the more subtle focus on the storyteller. The oh-so-obviou...
He lay under the bed breathing darkness as her voice put his name in the rooms, searching. “Ben? Ben? Benjamin?” He shrank inside his own silence. He wasn't ready to be seen, not now. He had old mistakes buzzing around in him, sour thoughts, a dank poverty of being. She wanted him in his shining ...
And tonight, I don’t think I want to. Why, exactly, is that? It’s weird. Don’t you think it’s at least a little bit weird? And I’m, well, getting tired of it. When exactly did you change your mind? I didn’t. Okay, I’m tired of pretending that I’m not tired of doing it. Is it because of that apple...