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Flesh and Blood
by Michael Cunningham
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In Flesh and Blood, Michael Cunningham takes us on a masterful journey
through four generations of the Stassos family as he examines the dynamics
of a family struggling to "come of age" in the 20th century.
In 1950, Constantine Stassos, a Greek immigrant laborer, marries Mary
Cuccio, an Italian-American girl, and together they produce three
children: Susan, an ambitious beauty, Billy, a brilliant homosexual, and
Zoe, a wild child. Over the years, a web of tangled longings, love,
inadequacies and unfulfilled dreams unfolds as Mary and Constantine's
marriage fails and Susan, Billy, and Zoe leave to make families of their
own. Zoe raises a child with the help of a transvestite, Billy makes a
life with another man, and Susan raises a son conceived in secret, each
extending the meaning of family and love. With the power of a Greek
tragedy, the story builds to a heartbreaking crescendo, allowing a glimpse
into contemporary life which will echo in one's heart for years to come.
Golden States
1ST Edition
by Michael Cunningham
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About the Author: Michael
Cunningham
Flesh and Blood is
Michael Cunningham's third novel. His first, Golden States, was published
in 1984. His second, A Home at the End of the World, published in 1991,
was widely acclaimed and was short listed for the Irish Times/Aer Lingus
International Fiction Prize.
Cunningham has also published a wide array of short stories, including "White
Angel" in The New Yorker (1988), "Pearls" in The Paris Review (1982), and
"Ignorant Armies" in The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories (Viking/Penguin
1994). He has also written articles for publications such as Esquire, Vogue, and
Out including "After AIDS, Gay Art Aims for a New Reality" for the front page of
the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times in April 1992.
Having won numerous fellowships from institutions such as the Mrs. Giles Whiting
Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Cunningham has
been awarded for his prose time and time again. His education includes a
Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University and a Master of Arts from the
University of Iowa, Writer's Workshop.
Michael Cunningham currently lives in New York City.
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A Home at the End of the World
by Michael Cunningham
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From Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours,
comes this widely praised novel of two boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely,
introspective, and unsure of himself; and Bobby, hip, dark, and
inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in with Jonathan and
his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars. Bobby and Clare
fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to father
Clare's child. Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move to a
small house upstate to raise "their" child together and, with an odd
friend, Alice, create a new kind of family. A Home at the End of the World
masterfully depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life
today.
Review:
"Cunningham writes with power and delicacy....We come to feel that we know
Jonathan, Bobby and Clare as if we lived with them; yet each one retains
the mystery that in people is called soul, and in fiction is called art."
Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
Review:
"Lyrical...memorable and accomplished." The New York Times Book Review
Review:
"Once in a great while, there appears a novel so spellbinding in its
beauty and sensitivity that the reader devours it nearly whole, in great
greedy gulps, and feels stretched sore afterwards, having been expanded
and filled. Such a book is Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the
World." Sherry Rosenthal, San Diego Tribune
Review:
"A gripping, haunting piece of work from a writer of real promise and
power." Publishers Weekly
Review:
"Cunningham has written a novel that all but reads itself." The Washington
Post Book World |
The Hours
by Michael Cunningham
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Winner of the 1999
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Winner of the
1999 PEN/Faulkner Award
A
daring, deeply affecting third novel by the author of A Home at the End of the
World and Flesh and Blood.
In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted
writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia
Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with
the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative
of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the
fictional stories of Richard, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his
talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to
forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers,
and family.
Review:
"Steeped in the work and life of Virginia Woolf, Cunningham offers up a sequel
to the work of the great author, complete with her own pathos and
brilliance....[G]orgeous, Woolfian, shimmering, perfectly-observed prose. Hardly
a false note in an extraordinary carrying on of a true greatness that doubted
itself." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"Inspired....Michael Cunningham dazzles." Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
Review:
"At first blush, the structural and thematic conceits of this novel...seem like
the stuff of a graduate student's pipe dream....[But] the reader becomes
completely entranced....[T]he gargantuan accomplishment of this small book [is
that] it makes a reader believe in the possibility and depth of a communality
based on great literature, literature that has shown people how to live and what
to ask of life." Publishers Weekly
Review:
"A delicate, triumphant glance....A place of late-century danger but also of
treasurable hours." Michael Wood, The New York Times Book Review |
