The four characters who narrate Michael Cunningham’s intricately threaded first novel come dramatically to life in this excellent reading. Bobby, read by Colin Farrell in a flat middle-American voice, is the understated center of this recording and the story itself, in which a gay man, a straight man, and an older woman set out to rear a baby together. Cunningham, who received the Pulitzer Prize for THE HOURS, is a matchless stylist whose eye for character and scene is rendered in immaculate images and metaphors. Individual narrators break at 20 to 30 minutes, ideal for exercising and tasking, the succulent prose allowing frequent breaks and interludes. But, beware. A particularly heartrending death will discombobulate you, whatever you’re doing, and the later seduction should not be experienced in public. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Two very different boys are drawn together by their oppressive home lives and by a connection that is both brotherly and sexual in this superb audio adaptation of Cunningham's vivid coming-of-age tale. Clevelanders Bobby Morrow and Jonathan Glover become childhood friends in the 1960s, and their friendship persists well into the '80s, when first Jonathan and then Bobby moves to New York City. There they meet aging hippie Clare, who imposes her own needs upon the two men. Clare, read with unflappable clarity by Van Dyck, attempts to build a normal life for herself using Bobby to become pregnant and Jonathan as emotional support. But as Jonathan's perceptive mother, Alice, warns her son, the unusual family they're creating won't last. Actors Farrell and Roberts who play Bobby and Jonathan respectively in the Warner Brothers motion picture fill the same roles here, and both deliver moving, understated performances. Although some listeners will wish they could soak up this absorbing story all in one sitting, the narrators' well-paced readings force the listener to sit back and appreciate the intricacy and skill of Cunningham's exquisite prose. Based on the FSG hardcover. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

This poignant and absorbing novel, parts of which have already appeared in the New Yorker , is one of a kind: at once a bildungsroman that reveals a remarkable gay sensibility, a serious appraisal of how parents and children relate over the years, and a clear-eyed account of '80s ways of looking and living.

It is the story of two young Clevelanders, Jonathan and Bobby, who become boyhood friends in spite of, and partly because of, their unhappily adjusted parents. They eventually emigrate to New York, where they end up living together -- and with a superbly realized eccentric, Clare, a very hip but desperate woman who tries to relate to them both, ends up having Bobby's child, attempts to share life in the country with them and eventually drifts away. Other characters rendered in detail include Jonathan's mother, Alice, a firm-minded survivor; her ever-optimistic husband, Ned; and Jonathan's sometime lover Erich, who comes to agonizing life for the reader only as he is dying of AIDS.

No praise can be too high for Cunningham's writing. He worked six years on the novel, and it shows in the careful way he evokes fleeting thoughts and states of consciousness, in the lyrical sense of the ordinariness of place, whether Cleveland, New York, Arizona or upstate New York, in the musical background that accompanies much of the action, almost as in a movie, and in the unexpected ways that characters who have not met before interrelate when they do. His story is told from several alternating points of view -- Jonathan's, Bobby's, Clare's and Alice's -- and though this works well in narrative terms, the voices are not as different as one would expect from such fully realized characters. And some scenes, like the birth of Clare's baby, are unaccountably missing.

Still, this is a gripping, haunting piece of work from a writer of real promise and power.

Cunningham's novel focuses on the close friendship of Bobby and Jonathan. As boyhood friends growing up in Cleveland in the late Sixties and Seventies, Bobby and Jonathan form a relationship that is both average and far beyond what most kids would consider "normal.'' After high school Jonathan moves to New York City, where Bobby soon follows. They become involved with Clare, a slightly older woman who finds each one appealing in his own way. The rest of the novel centers on their unusual life together. This well-written book has lots of good dialog and will appeal to readers who want something other than the tried and true best seller.
-- Mary K. Prokop, CEL Regional Library, Savannah, Georgia

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.
-- The Los Angeles Times

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

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 Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World.
-- San Diego Tribune

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

The four characters who narrate Michael Cunningham’s intricately threaded first novel come dramatically to life in this excellent reading. Bobby, read by Colin Farrell in a flat middle-American voice, is the understated center of this recording and the story itself, in which a gay man, a straight man, and an older woman set out to rear a baby together. Cunningham, who received the Pulitzer Prize for THE HOURS, is a matchless stylist whose eye for character and scene is rendered in immaculate images and metaphors. Individual narrators break at 20 to 30 minutes, ideal for exercising and tasking, the succulent prose allowing frequent breaks and interludes. But, beware. A particularly heartrending death will discombobulate you, whatever you’re doing, and the later seduction should not be experienced in public. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine