A Home At The End Of The World by Michael Cunningham

A Home at the End of the World
By Michael Cunningham; Picador
ISBN 9780312202316
7.3/10 Dropps

If you haven’t yet read The Hours, stop reading this review now and go and check it out
of your local library immediately. A recipient of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, it
lives every bit up to the hype. Gorgeous, poetic, moving, relatable—it’s everything good
fiction writing should be—and more. The worn copy I have sitting on my bookshelf at
home is dog-eared, highlighted, note-ridden, and bent—all scars a testament to my great
love for the even greater novel. Sadly, however, this review is not about The Hours (and
what more could I say about it, really? Read it!). It’s about Cunningham’s earlier fiction
attempt (second only to 1984’s Golden States): A Home at the End of the World. And
AHATEOTW, though possessing Cunningham’s characteristic literary flair, is—to put it
bluntly—disappointing.

The first part of this book was phenomenally gorgeous. His prose is somehow
simultaneously stunted and flowing, and each section read as a perfect, succinct, and
complete short story in and of itself. The background of the two main characters was
the most intriguing part of the book for me, and if you read it I think you’ll know what
I mean. It was this that automatically incited investment once the two characters meet
and grow close, and you become painfully interested in who they’re going to be …more
The first part of this overall moving chronicle of two friends and the divergent paths
their lives take—only to bring them back together again once they reach adulthood—
is phenomenally gorgeous. Cunningham has a writing style that is uniquely and
recognizably his own, that sweeps you into the thick of the book before you’ve even
realized you’ve started reading it. His prose is somehow simultaneously stunted and
flowing, and each section—the chapters are short, and punctuated with frequent
paragraph breaks—reads as a perfect, succinct, and complete short story in and of itself.
This background of the two main characters is the most intriguing part of the book. It’s
their unlikely interaction that automatically incites investment on the part of the reader.
Once the two characters meet and grow close, you become painfully interested in who
they’re going to be as they grow older, both individually and each in regard to the other,
given their intricately troubled pasts.

In the second and third parts of the book, however, this promising character setup fails
to pay off. In the second, the two friends are in their 20s, and find themselves caught in
a love triangle with a young woman in New York City. When she becomes pregnant,
the three move to the country to set up house in Woodstock and attempt to redefine
the concept of “family” on their own unique terms. While the second section is okay
(it still seems to be leading up to a potentially satisfying dénouement), the third is just
unnecessary. Every moving, painful, aching thing that needed to be said between the (still
intriguing) main characters has already been said by this point—there’s no need to tie
everything up in a meaningful and neat little package.

There’s a “twist” at the end of the book that is way, way too obvious given the fact that
it’s a Cunningham novel (even though, at the time it was written, I’m assuming he hadn’t
done this yet in any of his other books). Still—as a fan—it disappointed me and, due to

its irritating predictability, took away a lot of my empathy towards what should have
been an otherwise incredibly sad and empathetic situation. In whole, I’d give at least 9
Dropps to the beginning of the book, but the ending bogged it down. He’s still a brilliant
writer, but he tried too hard here to continue the story and didn’t seem to know where to
stop.

Also: the book flap lies. Things don’t progress like it expressly says they will, so you may
end up spending a lot of time waiting for something to happen that never actually will.
Additionally annoying. Reader be warned.

-Nicole Marie Rea