Michael Cunningham: A Home at the End of the World (1990)

It would be easy to label A Home at the End of the World as a book about identities, since it contains negotiations on sexual ambiguities, untraditional family formations and a quest of finding your geographical place. Despite the temptation, I would not say so. This is not a story of individualistic search for identity, but more so a story about lives, choices and affections. Yes, most of these lives could be said to be unconventional, but pondering on their normality is not the point of this novel.
 
As is typical to Cunningham, this novel is told through the views of different persons. We have friends and teenage lovers Jonathan and Bobby; Alice, Jonathan’s mother who is unhappy with her life; and Clare who does not quite know what she wants. Actually most of them don’t know what they want. Bobby is the most focused and untroubled of them all. He knows he wants a house and life like the one teenage Jonathan had. What is the peak of dullness to one, can be dream come true for another. But we can not take another person’s place in life, not to the full. Try we can, but succeed – probably not.

A Home at the End of the World allows us to follow the paths of Jonathan, Bobby, Alice and Clare on their seeking for purpose and home. And what really is a home? A place, a state of mind, a feeling of belonging or another human being offering solace? Is it permanent or fleeing phenomena? At least it is fragile, nothing to take for granted and certainly nothing that would always be solely welcoming and comforting. Same goes for family. The formations of family change through out the book, but most of them are not composed of biologically related people. Maybe biologically connected in the sense of exchange of fluids – and viruses. A part of us stay with those we touch.

Cunningham depicts his characters with striking accuracy. Their feelings and flaws are so human you can almost feel their breath on the pages. Despite the sad notes in this book it is one very hard to put down. Where is home – will we ever know?