A Home at the End of the World

By: Michael Cunningham

Narrated by: Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts, Jennifer Van Dyke

Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

It was the start of my second new life, in a city that had a spin of its own - a wilder orbit inside the earth's calm blue-green whirl. New York wasn't open to the hopelessness and lost purpose that drifted around lesser places....

Meet Bobby, Jonathan and Clare. Three friends, three lovers, three ordinary people trying to make a place for themselves in the harsh and uncompromising world of the '70s and '80s. And as our threesome form a new kind of relationship, a new approach to family and love, questioning so much about the world around them, so they hope to create a space, a home, in which to live.

Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels Flesh and Blood, The Hours, Specimen Days and By Nightfall.

©1990 Michael Cunningham (P)2014 Audible, Ltd

Critic reviews

"A writer of great gifts. Cunningham's voice reaches that lyrical beauty in which even the grimmest events suggest their potential for grace." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Intensely, almost painfully intimate. A superb and major novel." (David Leavitt)
"As well as being fluent and attractive, this intimate saga of our times is immensely wise." (Mail on Sunday)
"Cunningham writes with power and delicacy of his three characters. Yet each one retains the mystery that in people is called soul, and in fiction is called art." (The Los Angeles Times)
"Extremely intelligent, moving and accomplished. Cunningham has mastered the art of evoking the richness of domestic lives." (Sunday Times)

.Glad it's all over .......

Usually when I finish listening to a book, I feel a sense of sadness that it has ended. With this book all I felt was a sense of relief!
There was no depth to any of the characters, they are not the sort of people that I would want to surround myself with, very much two dimensional. As for the narration, I was glad that the character was announced at the start of the chapter as the two male performers were indistinguishable. Both had this lazy, post-coital drawl which on reflection, matched the pathetic drippiness of the wishy-washy characters. My advice -go find something else to listen to!

A book of its time

Fits the 80s and 90s perfectly; nicely written and well paced. A bit of an abrupt finish which on reflection, fits perfectly.

liked it

so much love in this book!
the speed was too fast for me, so I listened at 0.85

An almost ritual-like ministration upon 3 lives.

At times, I agreed wholeheartedly with a previous reader who had exclaimed how glad they were that this novel was over. The almost imperceptible speed of the narrative takes a long while to get accustomed to although The Hours was not dissimilar. Ultimately, I did not care for the folk in the story but I became engrossed in the ‘where’ these people inhabited. The era. The mode of big city and then country living, both were conjured up to me vividly. It felt like wading through a memory that one does not actually have but can recognize fully. Worth the work in the end.