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    A Home at the End of the World: A Novel
    A Home at the End of the World: A Novel
    A Home at the End of the World: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    A Home at the End of the World: A Novel

    Written by Michael Cunningham

    Narrated by Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts and Blair Brown

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    From Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours, comes the acclaimed novel of two boyhood friends A Home at the End of the World, now a feature film starring Colin Farrell and Dallas Roberts Jonathan.

    There's 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 roommate, 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 upstate to raise "their" child together and, with an odd friend, Alice, create a new kind of family.

    A Home at the End of the World masterfully depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateJul 1, 2004
    ISBN9781593973919
    A Home at the End of the World: A Novel
    Author

    Michael Cunningham

    Michael Cunningham is the author of six novels including A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours, Specimen Days, and non-fiction book, Land’s End: A Walk Through Provincetown. The Hours was awarded both the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award and made into an internationally acclaimed, Oscar-winning film. His new novel, The Snow Queen, will be published in May of 2014. He lives in New York.

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    Reviews for A Home at the End of the World

    4/5

    610 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A touching tale of two young boys, each from a troubled background, who grow up togerther and enjoy a brotherly love and a sexual relationship. One then the other moves to New York, there are new charcacters, new relationships and finally a new location, but it is the love between the two that forms the basis. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I liked the Hours better. This wasn't bad, I just got confused with the characters, so it was hard to keep track. I didn't care for Clare's character. I felt like she was a third wheel for a novel character. I liked the LGBT parts and thought it was a moving story overall.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of a friendship. Bobby and Jonathan meet in junior high and experiment with all things adult together. As they grow into adulthood, they form an ersatz family with Clare, an older woman, and the daughter she has with Bobby, but they all are her parents. On the fringe of the family is Erich, Jonathan's lover.
      I don't know where to begin describing how much I liked this book. The writing is terrific-simple and eloquent. The characters are full of flaws-raw and realistic. Description of time and place, appearances, everything is well done. It's not wrapped up in a bow at the end, but that's in its favor. The subject matter may not be for everyone, as it addresses unconventional family, homosexuality and AIDS, but it's tastefully done. Highly recommended!
      While reading this, my experience was enhanced by listening to classic rock from the 60s and 70s, and then CBGB punk rock artists like the Talking Heads, Ramones and Blondie.
    • 2/5
      I read this because it is No. 86 on Entertainment Weekly's 2013 list of the '100 Best Novels Ever' and the reading of it brings to 80 the number of novels on that list I have read. The book begins with an account of weird boys in Cleveland, Johathan and Bobbie, who have parents not overly addicted to discipline and who eventually end up in New York living with Clare, who also has a life not conspicuous for moral behavior. Clare seduces Bobbie and eventually has a child, Rebecca, with him which Jonathan considers himself as one ot the child's three parents. None of the main characters have any adherence to morality and Jonathan's male lover, Erich, apparently has AIDS, thought the disease is not named. There is little good I can say for the characters in the book.
    • 4/5
      One of the most powerful openings to a novel I have ever read. The writing is pitch perfect throughout. However--big however--the middle dragged and I found the ending sentimental. Ultimately, despite all the excellent qualities in this novel, I was disappointed.
    • 5/5
      "You don't necessarily meet a lot of people in this world."

      This is the first of Michael Cunningham's books I've read, but I will be reading all of them. He just flat gets it. By the time I was halfway through, I more or less disliked two of the three main characters, but I wasn't tired of reading about them. I wanted to figure them out. I wanted to like them and if I didn't, I wanted to understand why.

      This is one of those books that you read a sentence or a paragraph or a scene and it hits you deep down, sometimes in the places where you're most insecure. (If you're someone who underlines quotations, get new pencils. Get a *box* of pencils.) There were times when I was sad or upset about something and would read another book instead because I didn't want to feel everything that this one brought up.

      I'm making this book sound like a big downer. It isn't. It's exhilarating, like all the best books, because it tells you what you know is true and then makes you look at it all again.
    • 3/5
      I was disappointed with Michael Cunningham's "A Home at the End of the World." That's not to say it's a bad book... it isn't.... but I was expecting more from it. There just wasn't anything particularly special or interesting about it to set it apart. I'm surprised that it was included on a version of the 1,001 books to read before you die list.The story, told from alternating points of view, mainly follows the lives of Bobby and Jonathan, who slip into a complex love triangle. Jonathan is gay, Bobby is bisexual and their lives are messy and complicated.The story is well-paced though a bit predictable. I found the book to be "okay" but not particularly memorable or noteworthy.
    • 4/5
      I'm on a Michael Cunningham kick - I read The Hours years ago and liked it, but not enough to seek out his other work. Then I listened to By Nightfall and loved it, so much so that I followed that one with this one, which is also very good. I love the richness and depth of the characters, how they're totally believable yet such strong individuals as to be not quite like anyone I've known. The audio version is read by multiple readers (the book is told from the rotating viewpoints of four characters) and it's very well done.
    • 4/5
      I liked the novel, interesting characters. this is a novel that explores what makes a family.
    • 3/5
      Cunningham’s first novel doesn’t have the polish or complexity of The Hours or Specimen Days but is still very readable. It is typical first-novel stuff: a coming-of-age story about two boys—one homosexual, the other damaged by the violent death of his brother—who form a lifelong bond and even a family with a woman they both fall in love with. The prose was very engaging, but the relationships didn’t come fully alive for me, a problem for a character-driven novel, and some of the situations seemed forced. So this early effort was just okay for me.
    • 5/5
      This is the first book I've read by Michael Cunningham, and I was just blown away. His sentences are amazing and his characters are heartbreakingly complicated and messed up. I didn't want the story to end; I didn't want to leave the characters alone for a second. I think I liked it too much to really be coherent or critical about why just yet, but it was wonderful and I can't recommend it strongly enough.
    • 4/5
      Cunningham uses many of thesame themes and elements inA Home at the End of the Worldhe would later reusein The Hours including mom-son relationships, gay relationships,the lost feeling in modern life,death, and the joy of living inthe moment.
    • 4/5
      * NO Spoilers were used in the writing of this review! * This is an example of a well written and engrossing plot about a cast of annoying characters. I couldn't relate to these people or care very much about them because they're glaring examples of the negative qualities plaguing modern society: self-centered slackers drifting aimlessly through life, choosing an unconventional lifestyle but still unable to be honest with each other (or themselves) due to an ingrained fear of upsetting the status quo. The female character becomes even more self-centered and insensitive as a mother. After investing almost 350 pages into the lives of these characters, the ambiguous ending was a disappointment. Still, Cunningham's gorgeous prose held my attention riveted, despite its lack of true enlightenment or substance.
    • 3/5
      This was a strange little book. I enjoyed it, because the characters were interesting and well written, but the whole plot was a little ...umm...different. Maybe it's because I lead a sheltered life and have never been around the kinds of subcultures this book discusses. It was hard for me to understand the life of a bi-sexual man, his gay friend, and their straight female roomate. To say that the relationships got a tad complicated in this book would be an understatement. But honestly, I did enjoy it. It opened my mind to new things and sub-cultures and because of that I give it 3 stars.
    • 4/5
      Cunningham has an excellent ability to force his readers to pay attention to his characters. Here we have three, and we get them from three different first person POV's, which from a lesser writer would've failed horribly. The story focuses on three friends/lovers who are dealing with love, life, relationships, family, and what does to each of these. Not a traditional story about traditional relationships, these are real people bleeding on the page, and sometimes, it hurts to see them act so believably.
    • 3/5
      Does not live up to Flesh and Blood. As always, Cunningham creates complex believable characters. I found the plot a little weak however and part bordered a little too much on the political correct above the real.
    • 5/5
      Good, 2 boys growing up, in love with each other, one is gay. Lyrical, sad and touching.