A Home at the End of the World

I imagine Michael Cunningham to have a very beautiful, gentle view of the world, because that's what comes through in his writing. A Home at the End of the World is so hauntingly lonely and fragile, truthfully illustrating what it's like to grow up. Nothing turns out as you expect but you manage and come to terms with it. Who among us has even a notion of what they're doing? There is a bit of Clare, Jonathan, Bobby, and Alice in us all.

It's the beauty of the tiniest moments which hang in your memory that really defines our lives. I think of this often, and I'm so charmed that Cunningham wrote about it:

"I wouldn't say I was happy. I was nothing so simple as happy. I was merely present, perhaps for the first time in my adult life. The moment was unextraordinary. But I had the moment, I had it completely...I would not die unfulfilled because I had been here, right here and nowhere else."

It was a gorgeous scene to end the book, but I was slightly disappointed that the final chapter wasn't written through Rebecca's eyes. I find arguments pro and against this tactic so regardless, I'm completely under Cunningham's spell. I still prefer The Hours, but this one stands on its own is in a different sort of way.