From Publishers Weekly
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. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Library Journal
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 Lib., Savannah, Ga.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
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-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Review
"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



Review
"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



Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
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.


Review
"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



Book Description
From Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours, comes this widely praised novel of two boyhood friends: 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.



From the Publisher
Praise for A Home at the End of the World: "Lyrical...memorable and accomplished." --The New York Times Book Review "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." --Matthew Gilbert, The Boston Globe "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 "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." --Sherry Rosenthal, San Diego Tribune


About the Author
Michael Cunningham is "one of our very best writers" (Richard Eder, The Los Angeles Times). An excerpt from A Home at the End of the World was published in The New Yorker, chosen for Best American Short Stories 1989, and featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. He is the author of two other novels, Flesh and Blood and The Hours. He lives in New York.

ANNOTATION

A powerful and original novel that tests perceived notions of family, home, and community, to probe the mysteries of our fundamental loyalties. Shrewd, closely observed and deeply feeling, this novel is a remarkable achievement.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Michael Cunningham's novel is the story of two boyhood friends: 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 create a new kind of family. A Home at the End of the World depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life today.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

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.

Publishers Weekly

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.

Library Journal

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

AudioFile

The author of the award-winning THE HOURS looks at the intertwined relationships of three friends who share, first, a New York apartment and then an upstate house: Jonathan, an introspective gay man; Clare, an emotionally scarred divorcée, and Bobby, who has had sexual relations with both. The novel examines each of their points of view, and that of Alice, Jonathan's mother. This audio production uses four performers as the central characters tell their stories (with the two male actors starring in the movie based on the novel). The multiple voices add to the emotional weight, telling the story powerfully. Perhaps the approach works too well, as it intensifies the bittersweet, frequently sad tone, with the intended upbeat ending failing to strike a hopeful note. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Rosenthal