STELLA MALATA



Titolo molto adatto a questo bel romanzo che parla davvero di carne e sangue e di carne e sangue ha il gusto.
Anche se poi probabilmente il sapore che rimane nell’anima è quello della cenere: la cenere in cui sia carne che sangue, fragili e caduchi, si trasformano.
Curioso che io l’abbia apprezzato tanto e non abbia mai letto null’altro di Cunningham, neppure il suo premiato Le ore.

È bella la storia, anche se non particolarmente originale, trattandosi della storia di una famiglia di immigrati greci in USA: il padre capostipite, Constantine, che arriva nel continente nuovo quando ha dodici anni, insegue il sogno americano, si costruisce una nuova vita, e nuove possibilità, si sposa con una donna figlia di italiani, mettono su famiglia, tre figli. Cento anni della loro vita, dal 1935 al 2035 (questo sì, aspetto che esce dalla norma).
Un padre padre padrone, burbero e violento, determinato e accaparratore, che è la quintessenza del sogno americano nel suo raggiungimento del benessere economico e sociale partendo da una posizione di povero e ignorante.



A risentirne sarà l’equilibrio domestico: la moglie Mary, desperate housewife degli anni Cinquanta, lo lascia e divorzia. E lo stesso Constantine finisce col considerare anche la prole più un bene di possesso che figli da amare. Con l’eccezione di Susan, con la quale però si spingerà ben oltre, troppo in là, nell’infido dolente territorio dell’incesto.
Susan si sposerà presto, un matrimonio irreprensibile tutto di facciata, le nasce Ben destinato a fine precoce.
Al punto che l’unico maschio, Billy, è omosessuale, avrà sempre un rapporto conflittuale col padre, e per affrancarsi dall’eredità familiare si cambierà il nome in Will. Si lega a un uomo più grande di lui e si accontenta di un modesto impiego rinunciando, quasi nascondendo, la prestigiosa laurea a Harvard.
E anche la figlia minore, Zoe, non si separa dal nido in modo indolore: la aspetta un futuro di alcol, sesso, droghe e bar notturni. Fino all’incontro con Cassandra, transessuale: un amore che porterà entrambe a contrarre l’AIDS. Nel frattempo è diventata madre di Jamal, partorito dall’incontro con un afroamericano.



Dal punto di vista di Constantine Stassos un rosario di sciagure. È come se lui fosse una forza centrifuga nel suo inseguimento di rivincita e riscossa attraverso successo e denaro che finisce con lo scagliare il più lontano da sé il resto del nucleo familiare.
Gli Stassos sono l’emblema del paese America, un esempio paradigmatico pulsante e sofferente, un seme che viene da altrove, piantato sul suo a stelle e strisce, seme duro e coriaceo che riesce ad attecchire, crescere, irrobustirsi, riprodursi, debordare, correre, fuggire, in cerca di un’identità, della propria felicità sotto qualsiasi multiforme aspetto si presenti.
Una saga di più generazioni che tra-scorrono e passano fino all’arrivo dell’anno 2035.
E che Cunningham racconta con ritmo e lingua ipnotica facendoci empatizzare con tutti i suoi personaggi, anche i più ostici come il capostipite, che sa trasmetterci vivi e vividi, palpitanti. E così succede che senza accorgersene più mi avvicinavo alla fine e più centellinavo rallentando il ritmo della lettura.


Tutte le immagini sono tratte dal film “Una casa alla fine del mondo” di Michael Mayer, basato sull’omonimo romanzo di Cunningham (2004).americana116 s Candi650 4,916

“The world was made of mistakes, a thorny tangle, and no amount of cord, however fastidiously tied, could bind them all down.”

Michael Cunningham knows that the world is a big, messy place, full of chaos and danger. He knows that people are far from perfect, making huge blunders along the way. But he also loves people, despite all our faults. I just know he does. It comes across so beautifully in his writing; I often have to stop and close the book and catch my breath for a few moments after reading certain passages. I began my Cunningham journey at perhaps an unusual point compared to most readers when I picked up his non-fiction book titled Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. That piece left me so charmed I knew I’d have to trek beyond the tip of Cape Cod and into some of his other worlds. Grabbing next what was considered his masterpiece, The Hours, I had a niggling fear that I went in the wrong direction and would be disappointed in everything else thereafter. I was so wrong. Cunningham is more than just The Hours. So much more, friends!

He wanted to be happy in a solid, sustained way, hour to hour, not in turbulent little fits that gripped him at odd moments, usually when he was alone.

This is a saga of a family, the Stassos, beginning with the patriarch, Constantine, and then following the lives of his wife, Mary, and their three children, Susan, Billy (Will) and Zoe. We accompany them into adulthood, watch their growth (or lack thereof, in some cases), observe their dissatisfactions, groan at their errors, and weep at their misfortunes. There are several minor characters that Cunningham handles with equal depth, despite their more limited time in the spotlight. The family is full of imperfections. But Cunningham always makes us understand why his characters behave as they do. I was never left scratching my head trying to figure out why the hell they did this or that. Even while cursing certain actions, I nodded with an undoubting comprehension. It’s all here, the stuff of life: birth, death, marriage, infidelity, and sexual identity. Finding friendship and love in unexpected places. Our lives can be enriched by opening our hearts, embracing differences, setting aside preconceived expectations.

“… he wanted something that lay beyond simple vanity and the small, sour satisfactions it offered… Something was marrying him; something was lashing itself to his flesh.”

There’s one scene partway through this that caused me to set the book aside for a few minutes and take a deep breath. It was nothing remarkable on the surface. My mother, who was with me right then, said, “Uh oh. Someone must have died.” No, it wasn’t that at all. For one moment, I was there in a room with the distraught mother, Mary, and a drag queen named Cassandra. In that instant, I WAS Mary and Cassandra both. I couldn’t put into words how I felt, other than to say the old cliché that reading truly can make you walk in someone else’s shoes. It is so hard to explain that moment of epiphany – one of the reasons why we in fact spend our precious time with our noses in books.

“It’s hard to live. It’s hard to keep walking around and change into new outfits all the time and not just collapse.”

I don’t know how Michael Cunningham does it. I really don’t. His writing has not yet failed to dazzle and leave me with a bundle of emotions that seep over into my everyday life. But someday, when I make that trip to Provincetown again, I’m going to roam the streets looking for his cottage. And I’m going to knock on his door and ask him. I have a feeling that he won’t turn me away. I don’t think he’s that kind of a guy.

“The light that fell from the limpid sky seemed almost visibly to be thawing the earth, and it was possible to imagine, on a day this, that a huge rolling kindness, soft and unremarkable, more closely resembling human sentimentality than the more scourging benevolence of God, did in fact prevail in the world.”
book-i-own contemporary-literary favorites116 s Pedro207 579

After some thought, I think I might be ready for this review.
Right, I’ve read some of Cunningham’s novels before. Three of them. I loved two of them. The third one not that much (reread?). I loved ‘The Hours’, but ‘A Home at the End of the World’ cut too deep. I can feel it still, after all these years. (Specially when it gets really cold!!).

I started this book with a really good feeling about it. I just knew it was going to be great. I could feel it. (‘The Goldfinch’, I’m looking at you). And I was right. It was great. Epic, dare I say. So there’s this family, five people. No pets. We follow their lives. So good. Cunningham does it brilliantly. We love these people. We are there. We live the same lives.
The writing is just... Stunning. Peaceful. A sense of magic (it’s a kind of magic, magic...Magic!); when you’re going through the pages. Not magic realism, nooo... It’s a just a feeling. Peace and fear. No beginnings and no ends. Everything fits, yet everything crashes. There’s the pain, yes. But there’s beauty, there’s art, there’s family and love. New York and the sky. The light and the ocean. And then there’s pain again. And again. It hurts, yes. But it hurts so good.born-in-the-usa i-love-gay-sex this-is-how-it-should-be-done49 s Violet wells433 3,650

I can't think of much to say about this. It's a novel that won't essentially do Michael Cunningham's reputation as a novelist any harm or any good. The main characters in this three generational family saga interested me rather less than two of the minor characters - a drag queen called Cassandra and a big-hearted mixed-race kid called Jamal. There's a lot of soul searching (too much for me) and a lot of pretty writing but every day I was much more keen to read the Muriel Spark novel I had on the go. This, in comparison, felt a chore. That said, it's pretty accomplished for a second novel. 37 s Jane138 13

Everything that is trite and heavy-handed in novels is present here: there's an aging patriarch, kleptomania, lots of long descriptions of the way twilight moves across a neighborhood, self-mutilation, child abuse, questions of immigrant identity, questions of gender identity, questions of sexual identity, a whiff of incest, death, AIDS, drug abuse, New York, the suburbs, tract housing, class conflict, shifting American demographics, paeans to urban space, roiling hatreds in families, love, generational traits, generational conflict, sentences describing irrelevant objects as if they're sentient -- really, horror upon horror.

And I loved every page of this book, deeply and truly.

Cunningham's deft touch, his empathy, his love of beauty, all of them are astounding. In life, I sometimes have quick moments of Rolland's "oceanic feeling" -- a sense that there is a unity and order to things, just beyond the grasp of my intellect but within the ken of my feelings.

Cunningham must walk around feeling that all of the time, except his intellect is actually up to the task. Amazing.

Novels, even poor ones, have a hand in teaching me *how* to live. There is something deeply moving about reading something that reminds you of the *why.* Five stars!33 s Lisa490 114

3.5 Stars

Michael Cunningham's novel Flesh and Blood is the multi-generational chronicle of the Stassos family. He begins with the mismatched couple of Constantine and Mary and gives them 3 very complex children that they don't understand. All of the members of this family are frequently alienated from each other. Susan, Billy, and Zoe eventually leave home and try to figure out who they are outside of their dysfunctional family. And Susan and Zoe each go on to have a son.

Cunningham's writing is beautiful and is full of wonderful sentences and phrases:

"She understood the absorption and the urgent, almost bodily hunger for time, simple uninterrupted time in which to work."

"raised on a thrift hard as bone"

"Sometimes the things he heard himself say didn't match what was in his heart."

Cunningham also writes a beautiful death, not an easy feat.

A lot happens in this novel, and a lot of the story is pretty bleak. I see the themes of loneliness/alienation, loyalty, forgiveness, and death.

I don't relate to most of the characters, though I can see their distress and sympathize with them. Cassandra, Zoe's friend, is my favorite and a stand out for me. I can see and hear her as if she is here in the room with me. She is funny and feisty, confident in who she is; and Cunningham shows the scars under the veneer. She is the one character I would love to meet and spend time with.

I am struggling to rate this novel. While I love the writing and was pulled into the story in places, for much of the story I felt I was at a distance watching it unfold, a problem for me as I to be immersed in literary worlds. So better than a and not quite a love for me.

Note to Julie: there is incest in this tale.202230 s Jemppu514 97

What an absolutely wonderful slice-of-life story.

After having already fallen in love with Cunningham's earlier story A Home at the End of the World through adaptation, and finally reading it last year, then loving it again all the more, this was a curious peek into how the writer's other work would compare:

Magnificently.

Confirming what was already apparent in the aforementioned book, too: Cunnigham's narration is remarkably life and intimate with its undramatic telling. The narration lives authentically in a moment, without commenting on the story's events from outside with premeditated moralities or judgements or pasted on emotions, but instead, jumping between multiple fascinatingly reflective POVs, lets the characters themselves to think and react spontaneously, live with themselves and with each other which ever way they may.

All of which makes each of the separate story threads of the beautifully varied cast of individuals that much more compelling and touching. And in the process of knotting the characters together by their shared loves and losses, creating and up-keeping their family ties in both good and bad, the story keeps pulling the reader, too, more and more into the complicated relationships and simple realities of these people, so convincingly presented through their inner voices, with their human flaws and strengths on display.

Although very similar with their lifeness and reflectiveness (and bittersweetness), I found, that where "Home" was more focused on youthful search of self and separation, with the POV of parents' own self-doubts serving as a contrast to the offspring's story, here it felt the generations were truly equal; equally lost in the pace of their colliding lives and own individual experiences.

Yet, with all of these personalities, even at its most tumultuous, the story exists in a pleasantly calm manner. Not making a spectacle of itself.

Loved this. And though it can't quite beat A Home at the End of the World, I have to admit, that if there wasn't pre-existing, rooted sentimentality attached to the former, this would be a tough contestant.

_________
Reading updates.26 s Katie293 413

I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the other two Michael Cunningham novels I've read - The Hours and Specimen Days. It's less adventurous. Flesh and Blood is a family saga which takes place from the 1960s through to the 1990s and is narrated from the perspective of a father, a mother, a son and two daughters. Cunningham can write women really well and also the unhappy struggles to conform to what is pinchingly expected as normal in society. 27 s1 comment Gregory621 77

I’m a sucker for family sagas, especially if they span decades and feature a gay son. This one, however, takes the cake. I devoured it, was gasping for breath at times, and sobbed a child at the end. Not bad for my first Michael Cunningham. 10 stars. 18 s Lorna796 604

This sprawling novel by Michael Cunningham covers several generations of the Stassos family over a period of time spanning a century beginning in 1935 where we first meet eight-year old Constantine working in his father’s garden but thinking about his own garden, a square of powdered granite he had combed into the top of his family’s land. The theme of the land and its bounty is a metaphor running throughout the book. In 1950, Constantine Stassos, a Greek immigrant laborer, marries Mary Cuccio, an Italian-American girl. In the following years, they have three children, Susan, an ambitious but reserved beauty with her own deep secrets, Will a brilliant homosexual son winning a scholarship to Harvard, and Zoe, the wild and bright-eyed child that no one understands. This is backdrop of the family dynamics that play out over the generations as they struggle to come of age amid the changing twentieth century. Over the years as we scenes of the family play out, the cracks begin to show as one is drawn deeper into the perspectives of each character. And as author Michael Cunningham has control of the narrative amid luscious and descriptive prose. There is a lot of subtlety in this many-layered novel that one feels compelled to remain with this “messy” Stassos family, a beautiful book.

”Fat waves rolled lazily up against the Battery, broke blue-black and glittering, with a faint sound of exhalation. The sky over Manhattan held an immense and agitated light, here gray threaded with yellow, there an unsteady, aquatic green. In the harbor the Statue of Liberty held its book as tiny people stood inside its head, looking out.” american-literature immigrant-experience17 s8 comments Michael Belcher152 22

I’ve read this novel twice many years apart, and I’m still hard-pressed to think of many works as equally glorious. Able to capture great swaths of life, from everything I feared as a child—the strained suburban silences and amorphous defeat—to the restless pull of the grave. Every chapter offering the satisfactions of entire novels so that the reading experience is about savouring every line, every twitch of feeling. Cunningham able to make your own life feel precious enough for prose, its minutes saturated in meaning. An existence filled with “effervescence” and “gold-washed air.”life-changers12 s Doug2,205 771

4.5 Crummey is fast becoming one of my favorite authors, and although this doesn't quite hit the heights of his 'Sweetland', it is still a terrific collection of his short stories, a format I don't usually much enjoy. These stories have a few interconnections (kind of Strout's new 'Anything is Possible', which it reminded me of), and all but one take place in the tiny mining town of Black Rock, Newfoundland (the one exception concerns an ex-pat from there, living in China). Crummey started his literary output as a poet, and that certainly shows in the lyrical quality of his prose, which is often astonishing beautiful. There are a few clunkers, hence the 4.5 rating instead of a full five.

Be aware that there are TWO different editions: the one with the illustration of the house contains three additional stories, that are amongst the best in the collection (but has a more mundane cover than the gorgeous Lutz Dille photograph gracing the truncated one). I wound up buying copies of both in order to get the additional stories (both editions are OOP and carry a hefty price tag on the secondary market), but the first one is a signed edition - so I'm satisfied!10 s Greg Giannakis135 19

Crying in public on your bus home from work I think might be the best sign of a good book. This tore me apart and felt especially relevant what with Pride season upon us. No one can capture humans in all their ugliness and touching banality Michael Cunningham does. I think I felt the saddest after physically feeling myself leaving the little world and atmosphere the book created. No matter how much you grasp the paperback tightly, to the point that the pages begin to warp slightly, thinking that'll accomplish everything and anything, the feelings, thoughts and impressions the story leaves you with always dissipate a bit too unremarkably for my liking.9 s Sunny Shore408 18

This spectacular gem from the 90s is by author Michael Cunningham who wrote the award winning The Hours. It was made into a highly acclaimed movie w Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. Flesh and Blood is another winning achievement by this gifted writer. As I read this book, I experienced some of the most memorable prose I’ve ever witnessed. All this and a story about a dysfunctional family? Lol. It’s a win win situation. The characters are so real, I believe Cunningham is not only a writer but a master of psychology. This is difficult to achieve but the author pulls it off in a style that is unique and eye opening. The Stassos family portrayed in Flesh and Blood are probably many families with issues but somehow with Cunningham’s touch, we are seeing everyday people in a very personal manner, not seen in most family sagas. Through the authors lens, we are introduced to many microcosms of life itself that most writers are not capable of portraying. Enjoy Constantine, Mary, Billy, Susan, Zoe....their trials and tribulations...as only a classical contemporary master of words can present.7 s Francesca44 5


Per me superiore a "Le ore". Mi ha lasciato addosso una sensazione tra nostalgia e tristezza. Continueró ad approfondire l'autore con "una casa alla fine del mondo".

7 s Mbarkle136 4

This is my absolute favorite kind of book. It tells the story of a family over three generations, basically. I love the way the author is able to show the dysfunctional nature of the family, by going into each characters' head and describing their often conflicting thoughts. It's very realistic in that way, one minute a person feels one way, the next minute another, and then you see how they decide to act on their feelings.

I related to the story quite a bit, I am one of three siblings, born around the same time, and with many of the same issues as the characters in the novel. It has all of the themes necessary for a great story, love, lust, fear, illness, loss, prejudice, comfort, addiction, peace and finally resignation.

The book I kept thinking about as I read it is The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, although I finished Flesh and Blood feeling much better than I did after The Corrections. Flesh and Blood didn't leave me feeling down at all. I just wanted it to last a little longer.

6 s AmyAuthor 2 books4

I hate to think that Michael Cunningham is writing the same book over and over, because really, he isn't, but this one seemed it had his "stock" characters. Strong, but quirky women, a gay man with some guilt over his sexuality, etc. Depressing at the end. Still a fairly decent book, but go pick up At Home At the End of the World for a much better read by him.5 s Davis Aujourd'huiAuthor 4 books30

So you think you have a dysfunctional family! Try this book on for size. It is a fascinating tale of a family which plays out over several generations. This gives the readers a real sense for how and where family dynamics come from.

It is a book that will appeal to many different groups of readers. Gay readers will embrace some of the affirming gay characters not to mention the endearing transvestite.

This is a book that speaks about love and forgiveness. This lends the book a spiritual dimension. I especially appreciated that since I am the author of a spiritually-themed novel. I am always on the outlook for books that uplift my spirit. While this book will try your emotions, it ends on a hopeful note.

If you d The Hours, you will love this book too. The author writes prose as if it was poetry. He also has an uncanny knack for developing characters that are easy to relate to whether or not you can relate to the conditions of their lives. This book is a powerhouse. I didn't want to put it down.

Davis Aujourd'hui, author of "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude" 4 s James83 44

Another stunning novel from one of America’s greatest writers.

Having being a huge lover of The Hours, both the novel and the adaptation, I’m unsure why it took me so long to get round to reading Flesh & Blood. Cunningham writes of life, and all of its complexities, no other, whilst crafting beautiful, sparing prose.

I couldn’t recommend Flesh & Blood more, should you to read fiction that explores the human psyche in the context of a family unit, and all of the spaces and emotions in-between.best-of-the-best4 s Luís2,057 822

I will qualify this book as unhealthy; it is the feeling it gave me from start to finish. I was not too fond of it, and I read it with a certain detachment, sometimes I didn't recognize the characters, and I didn't get attached to them either, in short, I didn't manage to fit into this book as I do it with other readers. It's blah for me.e-2 lgbt-queer us-literature5 s Nicholas Nilsson48

I remember loving this book. I still wasn’t prepared for how much I would love it the second time around. I devoured it. I breathed it. And I am writing this, having spent the thirty minutes since turning the final page wracked with howling sobs. Not because it’s a sad book, mind you, though it has sadness in it. These were tears for the blinding beauty of this book, and all the blinding beauty in the world that it reflects. The beauty of hopes and disappointments, prides and shames, triumphs and defeats, loves and hates, joys and angers, lives and deaths.

These characters, man. I would to write about them, but they are all so starkly, defiantly alive… just no two real people are exactly a, and no real person can ever be neatly described, so do the members of the Stassos family skirt comparison or definition. No doubt they would sneer at anything I’d have to say about them as mere condescension.

I shall have to be satisfied with this: The lives lived within this book are among the most beautiful, quietly heartbreaking of stories, ones I will undoubtedly return to again and again throughout my own life.

Addendum: Mary, the matriarch, is still my favorite of them all. Her shoplifting as a cure for housewife boredom and dissatisfaction, her reluctantly bonding with with Cassandra the transvestite (my second favorite character) over makeup advice, and her being fine with her husband’s affair until she finds out that the woman in question is fat, upon which she has a complete meltdown… Maybe one my favorite characters in all of fiction.my-favourites owned5 s aida96 6

I found this book quite depressing. I don't know if it's caused by the writing style or the characters personalities, but something made me so sad and uncomfortable reading it. I the story though, even if it's disturbing and sad, sometimes a bit strange I'd say, especially the way the characters perceived, viewed and reacted to others, how oftentimes selfish and ruthless they were, not particularly in their behavior, but rather in their thoughts. Seldom, it was hard to read, because I couldn't help but think "Are people really this? Are we truly so greedy and egoistic?" or "Is life supposed to be this? So hard and unkind?" But now as I'm writing this, I'm finding answers to my own questions when I think about caring and loving people, that no, of course not, it's just the characters in this book. But still, it was a tough book sometimes due to this.
On the contrary, the idea of the plot really sparked interest in me, since it's about immigrants, life from scratch, several generations and family life. Even if there's a complete downfall of what was at the beginning whole. Because of this, it reminds me a lot of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, but that book was way more positive and joyful, even despite all the struggles. I understand that it's unreal that their lives would be a fairytale, I wouldn't it that way anyway, but it was too tragic for me in Flesh and Blood.3 s Lea967 260

I haven't read anything by Cunningham I haven't d yet; he's without a doubt one of my favourite authors. I was excited to dig into his take of a family saga, but I didn't expect it to be so good! It was one of those rare novels when you dread the ending, and you don't want to stop living in this world. So many POVs and I enjoyed all of them, I believed all of them. Yeah, Cunningham has his stock characters and archetypes that come up in all his stories, but while reading I don't mind. I still believe this family exists, and I feel even for the horrible people. A warning, though: this can be a rather bleak and depressing, even though it's also a celebration of life.2021 family-saga lgbt ...more3 s Alma658

"Tinha adoptado a sua voz mais sumida. Quando isso acontecia, era como se falasse com alguém que vivia dentro dela, um amigo invisível com quem partilhava a convicção de que o mundo era vasto e maravilhoso, mas, em última análise, demasiado extenuante para se viver nele."2019 bme-2023 michael-cunningham ...more12 s Joyce230

Prachtige familiegeschiedenis die in totaal vier generaties omvat, waarbij ik eerlijkheidshalve moet zeggen dat die vierde generatie er bekaaid vanaf komt, omdat het einde van dit boek helaas nogal afgeraffeld is. Daarvoor maken we kennis met Constantine, een Griekse jongen die met zijn familie in de VS woont, en later met zijn vrouw Mary, een Italiaanse in Amerika. We volgen het stel en hun drie kinderen in de loop van hun levens. Af en toe inclusief gruwelijke details, want Constantine is niet altijd de vader die hij misschien wel had willen zijn. Met onderwerpen als homoseksualiteit in het puriteinse Amerika in de jaren 70/80, gemengde huwelijken en de opkomst van Hiv/AIDS kiest dit boek toch al niet de makkelijkste weg, maar Cunningham schrijft er met veel flair een geweldig leesbaar verhaal van.2 s Alexandra Rodrigues208

Cunningham sempre com tramas elaborados, em redor do mote "personagens e as suas vidas".

A trama gira em torno das várias gerações (ao longo de 100 anos) de uma família; os seus dramas, vivências, dores, medos, incertezas, fragilidades, raiva, amor, sexo, doença, morte... e os que partilham das suas vidas.

Um mestre da escrita crua, despida de "salamaleques" (por vezes, doses maciças de realidade), a entrar-nos, sem pudor, portas adentro!2 s Paula´s Brief Review1,067 18

Las sagas familiares son mi punto flaco y además ésta está muy bien escrita.
Con este escritor cuesta al principio porque los personajes no son nada atractivos, pero sus historias enganchan "de lo lindo".2 s Zev698 3

If I'm counting correctly, this is the tenth one-star rating I've made recently. Others have been one-star or star-and-a-half. It would appear I hate reading. I do not! I've just picked books I wound up not liking.
Trigger warnings: domestic violence, incest, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, cheating, incest between first cousins framed as sexual experimentation, death of a parent, racism, suicide by drowning, a dozen pointless explicit sex scenes
SPOILERS. This was required reading in one of my college English classes. I was sixteen, and the professor said, "If you're in my class, I view you as an adult. I will treat you as an adult. We will be reading books with adult content in them." Every single book we read had graphic sex scenes and violence within families, or in one case discord within a marriage and the accidental death of a child as a result of roughhousing with older children. My professor was a conceited, arrogant weirdo. He picked these books out. I suspect things about him, now, as an adult. It's been half my life ago as of this writing, but I'm wondering. He d to be listened to, but not have discussions. Unless it was to steer someone to his POV. The class sat in a circle and analyzed this book the closest out of all the books he'd assigned. If someone seemed uncomfortable with the repetitive, gratuitous sex scenes, he'd shame them in class at length. I found the scenes exciting at the time. I didn't have a lot of life experience. Now, as an adult, I wondered how I'd interpret the book.

The story being told in this book does not really begin until page 270 (yes, two hundred and seventy) or so. Zoe, a woman dying of AIDS, is co-parenting her son with Cassandra, a woman the author refers to as a drag queen but I interpreted as a trans woman. The author mentions House of Xtraveganza in his dedication, which is a ball house and is examined at length in the documentary "Paris is Burning," which is a fantastic film. Cassandra could be either. I'm still going back and forth on it. Cassandra was my favorite character. Zoe is close to her brother Will, who has been secure in his homosexuality for years and fallen in love at thirty-five. I mention his homosexuality because the book makes such a goddamn big deal about it. The previous 270 pages could have been used as filler paragraphs, chapter transitions, and a few sentences here and there: references to their violent, tyrannical dad, their klepto, high-status mother, their dissatisfied sister who is cheating on her husband, who she literally married right out of high school. But this is written as a family saga, so it's gonna drag...on and on...I'm realizing I don't family sagas.

"Behind Closed Doors" by Susan Sloan had its first hundred pages as backstory, too, and did a better job of it. It also had family violence as a major theme, and a few sex scenes, and cheating, and the characters were also Catholic, and it was a family saga. So, on the surface they had several things in common. Back to this book. The sex scenes in this book are repetitive, explicit for no real reason, a huge turn-off, and add nothing to the story. Nor do the repeated domestic violence scenes. The incest doesn't add anything, either. Cunningham spends pages and pages on these three themes, when a paragraph here and there would be much more effective. The prose is incredibly flowery and purple. There's tons of useless narrative passages that increase as the book goes on. It's the author didn't know what to do, so he padded out his word count.

Years after I read this book for the first time, one passage in particular continued to stay with me. I had associated it with this book even after I'd largely forgotten the book itself. There is a...sad beauty, I'd describe it, to the sentence, "When the time came to start hating them...Andrew would be the last." (Cunningham 339). I'd looked forward to that passage for that one sentence, and was utterly dismayed to not find it in the book for awhile. I'd begun to think it was in another book altogether when wham, I turned a page and there it was! What delight, at realizing this was the book that had it. I kept reading because I wanted to finish the book. For some reason, Ben dies by drowning, with the implication that it's better to be dead than not heterosexual? WOW. A Bury Your Gays, Teenager Edition, written by a gay man who's won awards for his writing. I know of several out gay men who have this trope in their writing, but it's so harmful and stupid. And Ben was in an incestuous relationship with his cousin Jamal? Seriously WHY. I was so glad when the book ended.This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full review2 s Susie Nakash22

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