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4.5 Stars’Once our father bought a convertible. Don’t ask me. I was five. He brought it and drove it home as casually as he’d bring a gallon of rocky road. Picture our mother’s surprise. She kept rubber bands on the doorknobs. She washed old plastic bags and hung them on the line to dry, a string of thrifty tame jellyfish floating in the sun. Imagine her scrubbing the cheese smell out of a plastic bag on its third or fourth go-round when our father pulls up in a Chevy convertible...He saw it parked downtown with a For Sale sign and decided to be the kind of man who buys a car on a whim.’ - Bobby’I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be a beauty.’ - JonathanThis is a story about love, about belonging - or not belonging, or perhaps not belonging any one place, to any one person, anything. It is about belonging everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Having the freedom, or audacity, to change your mind along the way, of what you want...or perhaps of wanting the flexibility to have what you want without that cancelling out your other wants. Not in the sense of “I’d like a hamburger and a milkshake, but in choosing a life, a person - or persons - you want to share your life with, intimately.’This is what you do. You make a future for yourself out of the raw material at hand.’A Bob and Clare, and Clare and Jonathan, and so on kind of story.This is also a story about loss, family, love, friendship and devotion.Clare is around ten years older than Bob and Jonathan, she feels the window of opportunity to fulfill her desire to have a child closing day by day. Clare had always wanted a settled life and a shocking one. Her life one of nursing flocks of undisciplined wishes that collided and canceled each other out.’Hope takes on a fragility. Think too hard and it’s gone. I was surprised by the inner emptiness I felt, my heart and belly swinging on cords. I’d always been so present in the passing moments. I’d assumed that was enough - to taste the coffee and the wine...Soon there would be an important addition to the list of things I was too old to do.’ - ClareAlthough there are various locations in this story, the main story takes place in NYC, followed by upstate New York, not far from the Woodstock, where Clare was during the 1969 Festival. They buy a somewhat ramshackle old house that needs work, and then a small restaurant which is run by the men.And life is good, although it takes on a somewhat day-by-day routine of the necessary things in life, leaving little time left in the day for fulfilling leftover wants or dreams.They’d hoped for more, life was good, but was missing some of the things they’d envisioned. Their visions for their future had been formed in the optimism of their former, more youthful years, and their belief that they would not change as their parents had.Years ago, the year it was published, I read Michael Cunningham’s The Hours - years ago - and was swept away into those pages, and his prose. The stories aren’t really comparable, and even though this story didn’t flow quite as fluidly as The Hours, the prose is as lovely, and the story is nearly as engaging.. . and he just kept getting better. If you enjoyed The Hours, a magnificent novel, go back to Cunningham's rootsMichael Cunningham I read without referring to reviews - no matter what he writes. This started out as a sure-fire, five-star selection. Cunningham's writing style is superb. Such insight! Such definitive prose! But I got bogged down a bit during the middle. Got tired of Clare's actions and Jonathan's inability to get his life going. Well, I guess I shouldn't blame the author for that. Undoubtedly that's how he wanted it to happen. So, I'll give Clare and Jonathan about three stars, and make that up with Bobby and Alice, both of whom, in their own ways, seem to be survivors.What about plot and character? The novel definitely has a viable plot, even though it meanders somewhat aimlessly over several decades and multiple destinations. The ending seems true to the plot, i.e., you don't really know where the characters are going, which sums up the book nicely. Meanwhile, the individual character development is fine. The reader gets to know what the main characters are doing, although not necessarily why or what their activities and choices add up to. Once again, that's no doubt what the author wants to convey. The venues, as depicted by the author, are all dreary - Cleveland, Arizona, New York. Not exactly Reagan's shining city on a hill. But that fits in well with what the author seems to be saying about life.I lived through the decades depicted, and it more or less shocks me to think I might have been like either Jonathan or Bobby. Not that they were evil, or even nonentities, or that my own life has been an uninterrupted series of highs, but their lives seemed so humdrum and unfocused.Story was dreary and slogged along, Characters were not likeable. Nothing to really recommend this book.The last time I read a book was...I don't remember. I saw this movie and was entranced enough (and felt there was some missing material...maybe a lot) to buy, and then actually read, this book. Twice. I guess I liked it the first time, and I liked it the second time too.You probably don't have to be gay (or bisexual or whatever) to fully appreciate this book, but I think some familiarity with it would help, and might be the difference between enjoying this or just finding it strange and unrelentingly frustrating.Michael Cunningham has impressed me with his command of the language and his distinctive ability to describe and bring to life the inner feelings and outer personality of his characters. I cared about them, and I wanted them to find what they were looking for.The story affirms and celebrates differences and our search for fulfillment and love among the wreckage of human weakness, failings, and general imperfection.If you've seen the movie and had the urge to more fully examine and know these characters and the story, be warned that the book isn't identical to the movie. However, it's worth the time to read, and it's more satisfying in many ways. I think you will enjoy it.Finally, a quality, beautiful novel of realistic gay characters.Gay novels, or novels with gay characters, tend to be almost exclusively fatal: at least one of the couple dies, or the couple implodes because of the gay failings of one of the characters. Whether this is internalised homophobia of gay authors, the lived experience, or the demands of a hetronormative publishing world that requires deviants to be punished. The lives of the characters here are complex and complicated but ultimately life affirming. I loved the read and always recommend it to my downbeat gay friends. I've gine on to read many of Cunninghams novels, Flesh and Blood is especially good.My first Michael Cunningham novel and I was sorely disappointed. The story moves along at an agonisingly slow pace and the voice of every character - each chapter switches viewpoint - is startlingly similar. Bobby, for example, is supposed to be an "inarticulate" character, and in his simple, halting dialogue this is evident. Yet his thoughts are erudite, lyrical...the same as that of Jonathan and the woman (whose name I've already forgotten). This really jarred with me. The premise is interesting, but that's about it. Cunningham is also one hell of a dreary writer. Literary fiction can still accommodate some light relief, but this was utterly humourless. Very flat. Are all his books like this, I wonder?Of all the books I've read recently on the topic of "gay" (a series of Edmund White + My policeman + London triptych+ Like people in history + Evrybody loves you+ Flesh and Blood+ The front runner) it is, by far, the one I prefer.Why? Because the life energy that carries this book does not even have to ask about literary quality. There is a force to fight against adversity, to try to be happy, whether you are a man or a woman, to achieve in his or her love life, with unconventional means, for the time being can, and by developing, inventing forms of life, couple, two, three, that approach, moving away, where each partner, according to the periods closer to one or the other, with, sometimes, the overnight guests. And then distant removals for the time it takes, and sometimes for the rest of life. Not to mention the aging parents with whom we keep relationships.Perhaps I was particularly sensitive to the strength of the relationship of a lifetime (well, we do not know, because there are still things to live at the end of the book) that is anchored in a friendship of childhood becoming a kind of love for life. It's not perfect, but however, this is love. They are loves. And their bear life of quite a lot of people.A fascinating story of growing up and growing older at the turn of the century with two families whose lives are intertwined and thelead characters boyhood love which grows as they become completely dependent on each other - you get to love them both and the people with whom they live and cherish.One of the most beautiful novels you'll ever get to read. I'm a fan of Michael Cunningham's work anyway, but this novel has to be one of my favourite.