First, thank you Andy, for selecting this title for us. While I can't say this was a "favorite," I enjoyed it plenty, it thoroughly held my attention, and I am glad it was offereed. The two things I most enjoyed in this and other books that hold my interest are the finely tuned phrases and the chance to visit lives so different from my own.

Certain lines just grab me. For example, Adam, Jonathan's friend in jr high, is described as "staring...with the unabashed directness of one who believes his own unimportance renders him invisible." Isn't that perfect?

20 pages later, we get another gem. "At 13, we have so many choices to make, with no idea about how consequences can rattle through the decades." Ain't that the damn truth. (although, personally, my rattle-ridden choices were made later in life)

The characters, tho I might not want them as friends, are fascinating to me. I don't know the inner workings of gay men or bored lonely housewives. So reading gives me a chance to slip inside their skin. The surprise is when I find I have things in common with them. Jonathan says about Erich, "I hated him...for failing to change my life." I recognize that in some of my relationships.

What lingers in my mind then, is how spooky it is that Bobby (who we mostly agreed was pretty lame emotionally) says "I was alone inside myself" and I *get it*. ick. what does that say about me?

What lingers for you, Andy? You asked...but you didn't answer

barbara | November 21, 2003 12:28 PM

Hi, I am not a regular but I've read the book and have followed the really great discussion. I would like to address what Amy said way back on the 17th- that this book wasn't really exciting enough for her. My first instinct is to agree with her, but not totally. I wasn't excited by the book either and I also like books that really rattle you. (But, more on that in a minute.)

I did like Cunningham's use of language- sometimes he was so dead-on in a description that it was eery. Barbara's examples are good ones- the book is punctuated with these oases of poetic brilliance. But these instances are against a back drop of dull and borderline- unlikeable characters, plodding through lives that they aren't happy in. I suppose this is what Amy meant by "blah". But isn't that formula in itself interesting? Isn't it a perfect reflection of our lives today? Don't most of us sort of drudge through things and watch the second hand on the clock, while we're surrounded by characters that confuse or irritate us? (ok, a little projection on my part here)And don't we have these momentary epiphanies that make it all clear and seem to answer all our questions in an instant, like Cunningham's sporadic literary gems? So, in this sense, the book is great. It's a perfect microcosm of our modern lives.

But it's a drag to read. And I'll agree with a few people that said it started stronger and got weaker as it reached the end. This decline made me want to pick up the book each time less and less (hence my late post.)

april | November 21, 2003 4:59 PM

I think that most of the times, from what I read, I take away a certain character. What I mean is having known a character from the novel, or maybe more than one. I, personally like to read something that will give me an insight to anything, yet that can be done with any material, i.e., a history book, the newspaper, a philosophy book.

But since fiction is my choice of reading, what I look for is a character that draws me in, and a certain relationship. In the case of A Home at the End of the World, what I take away with me is Bobby, having known him, his relationship with Jonathan (and everyone else), and the role that he played. He feels like one of those that I've met or will meet someday.

I'm a people-person, so that's probably why I always take a character with me. In fact, I still think about Bobby, wondering how it all really was...I'm glad the author didn't divulge all of Bobby for us, he's a bit of a mystery.

ana | November 21, 2003 6:37 PM

Hi everyone,

I agree with Ana on this one. The main thing that I take away from novels is a character, although, occasionaly, what I get is an idea that I had not previously been aware of. (I encounter this a lot with good science fiction.)

And I guess that's been my problem with this book. I've only managed to make it about halfway partly due to having been unable to latch onto any one character. I find that I can't identify with any of them...

Perhaps that's a difference between Ana's and Barbara's comments and my own take on this? Both Ana and Barbara said that they like a glimpse into a different slice of life than their own (forgive me if I've mis-read or mis-interpreted your comments) while I think that I look for a character to identify with - to put myself into the story somehow.

Part of the reason I couldn't identify with any one character is that (and this was discussed in the other thread) I can't tell them apart at a glance. When I pick the book up after a break, I need to check whose chapter I'm reading.

I'm enjoying the story, but it's very slow going for me; I apologize for not having finished in time to participate more fully...

joel | November 21, 2003 7:58 PM

joel, yes! that's what i found myself doing quite often too!
i had to keep checking to see what person i was reading at the moment
but anyway, i'm not with barbara on that comment about liking a glimpse of a differenty lifestyle...
it's not necessarily that or it may be...
it's basically a character that draws me, whether i can identify with the character or not, just a certain something

ana | November 22, 2003 5:44 PM

Sometimes I dont take just a character away from a book but also a feeling (or not) that someone out there "gets it"- the author. After reading a book that really speaks to me, I feel like a sense of justice has been done in the way the author describes what I can only mumble and stutter about!

april | November 22, 2003 8:13 PM

I had the experience as you both, Joel and Ana; sometimes even while I was reading, I'd have to check to see who was narrating the chapter (with the exception of Alice; I pretty much always knew when I was in her head). As someone pointed out in the other discussion, that's probably intentional. Then again, I may just want that to be true because if it's not, that significantly weakness the book. (I liked Blindness in large part because the prose seemed to illustrate the blindness, making the reader blind as well, only to later discover that Saramago always writes that way. Alas.)

One of the reasons why I asked the questions above is because I'm not sure what I take away from books. I think it's mostly just a vibe, a combination of the characters and plot and mood. Which may explain why I tend to, on the whole, dislike mood pieces, because the mood is what I like to pick up on rather than have it force-fed to me. That said, I can't really identify the vibe I picked up from AHATEOTW; I think with this book I just enjoyed enhabiting this world.

Andy | November 22, 2003 9:59 PM

I'm not sure what I take away from a book. It's an interesting question and I've never thought about it before. I keep a list of all the books I read and ones that I want to read; after looking through this list, wondering what I've taken away from all the 'checked' books, it seems evident that the most important questions I ask myself are:

1. Did this book completely immerse me in another time/place?
2. Am I going to recommend this book to someone else?

For the most part, the second question depends on the first, but I could still recommend a book I didn’t particularly like because I know some of my friends/co-workers are into fantasy while others are into short stories, while others are into biographies, etc.

We all know that A Home at the End of the World is a lyrically beautiful book, but that’s not enough for me to recommend it. I could write lyrically beautiful prose about garbage (The flotsam of rubbish dancing across the face of a dead prostitute in the gutter pushed a wave of vertigo across me, this tragic scene suddenly made beautiful as I tried not to puke all over myself.)- HA HA HA, okay, you know what I mean. You can write sentences that make people stop, sigh and think about it but it’s just the wrapping paper around a present.

Honestly, if we weren’t discussing this book in such length, and I had picked it up and read it on my own, I would have forgotten it within a week. There wasn’t anything about it that made it stink in my mind.

amy | November 24, 2003 9:46 AM

Correction: There wasn't anything that made it STICK in my mind.

That's a Freudian Slip if I ever saw one.

amy | November 24, 2003 11:02 AM

I would like to say that when I got done with this book I kinda liked it a lot, but I thought the ending sucked. When reading the book I got the feeling that I knew the characters in real life, and I would've wanted the book to end with just jonathan, bobby and clare together(and their baby), but definitly not with Erich(I think, who was dying). I wasn't so sure about the end when clare was leaving to her mother's house with the baby (I haven't read books like these...hard to explain) Was she leaving Jonathan and Bobby? I know that after reading this book, I missed Jonathan, bobby and clare very much as if I knew them in real life.

I tried reading the book again after a few months when I got done with it, but it seemed boring to me...I knew what was going to happen and I felt like I shouldn't disappoint myself reading the end again...

I'm pretty much excited to see the movie coming out in July with colin Farrell(favorite actor) who will play bobby. I think Colin would play a great bobby. I'm very worried about seeing the movie and not liking it, as in the book was better than the movie. I know they'll leave out a lot of stuff from the book(I'm hoping Erich)and I heard that bobby will be HIV positive, which is really not what happened..So I am a little confused on the plot for the movie. But I hoping it'll be nominated for a oscar award if its really good, like The Hours.

Katelyn | April 16, 2004 11:18 AM