A Home at the End of the World

     Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World is a wonderful book. It has all the elements of a great contemporary novel. Clear, precise writing, characters that feel alive, and a plot that drives you forward deeper into the book until without realizing it you’re out the other end. The author of The Hours has consistently wowed readers with his visually sensuous writing and daring plots and characters. A Home at the End of the World follows three odd balls as they live together and eventually fall in love with each other. The book then determines to redefine the notion of "family".

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     Jonathan is an awkward little boy who plays with dolls instead of baseballs. Bobby witnesses the death of his only sibling, older brother Carlton, and it significantly affects him and his parents. Bobby meets Jonathan at school and they become best friends. They listen to records (the book opens when the boys are young in the early 1960s), smoke pot, drop acid, and do basically everything together. Eventually they begin experimenting with each other sexually. Cunningham employs a multi-narrator approach to the story. Each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view. Jonathan and Bobby tell most of the story but Jonathan’s mother Alice also provides some narration in a few chapters. Eventually the boys go their own ways and meet up again in New York where Jonathan invites Bobby to come live with him and his roommate Clare. Clare then becomes the forth narrator. She’s a quirky woman in her 30s (the boys are in their 20s at this point) with multi-colored hair and a trust fund. Eventually they all fall in love with each other and decide to have a baby together. The baby would essentially have two fathers and one mother. Like I said, the definition of family comes into question, but in an intriguing way. 

It’s a very compelling book and told so well by Cunningham. His novels should be taught a hundred years from now in writing classes like Fitzgerald is today. It’s truly that good.

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     The movie was released a few years after The Hours swept the Oscars. It’s obvious they were attempting to build off that film’s warm reception but it didn’t work out that way. The film feels thrown together last minute. There’s no style or substance to speak of. It’s basically a greatest hits version of the novel: all the big key moments are there but none of the connecting tissue that provide the bridges between these moments. There is basically zero character development. It’s tough to blame the filmmakers because the book seems like you couldn't make a good movie out of it. It’s hard enough to make a good movie out a first person narrative, never mind four! And the odd thing is that Cunningham wrote the screenplay. Another problem is that it’s too short. It’s a 350 page book and the movie is only 90 minutes. Even the star-studded cast (Colin Farrel, Sissy Spacek, Robin Wright Penn, Dallas Roberts) doesn't add anything to the rushed pace of the film. The only redeemable quality of the film is the excellent sixties soundtrack. All the right songs play at all the right moments. On all other accounts, the film fails. A Home at the End of the World is 100% worth your time and high up in Cunningham’s bibliography but the movie is just bad. It’s an afterthought. Read the book, don’t even bother with the movie.

How I Live Now

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     How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff is my favorite book that I've read this year. It’s not new (it was published in 2004), but it still feels fresh almost a decade later. It totally took me by surprise. First off it’s technically Young Adult. Many YA books can be enjoyed by all ages but How I Live Now truly feels like it’s meant for an older audience than the typical YA target. It’s themes range from war, death, love, incest, heartbreak, and survival in extreme circumstances. If filmed literally and straight from the book this story would be R rated; not meant for teenagers at all. But it’s all delivered through the eyes and thoughts of Daisy, the 15-year-old protagonist who is basically a female Holden Caulfield. Catcher in the Rye has never been made into a movie because it’s basically not filmable. The whole thing is experienced in the head of one of the most eccentric and sarcastic main characters ever designed. I had very low expectations for the recent How I Live Now adaptation and I was right. You couldn't adapt this book properly no matter what angle you took.

     Daisy is a sarcastic, angry, angsty 15-year-old New Yorker sent off to live with her cousins in England after her widowed father marries another woman. Daisy hates her father and her new step mother and as you would expect, just about everything else in her world. She is depressed and anorexic but views and conveys her situation with so much spite and wit that you can’t help but laugh along with her telling of the story. Although not at first, Daisy becomes a truly lovable character. You just want for her to be happy in the end. A war erupts in this not-too-distant future England and Daisy is separated from her older cousins, left alone with her younger cousin Piper who she must take care of amid havoc and social anarchy. The second half of the book is a survival story. I felt so sorry for poor Daisy and little Piper that I desperately wished for their safety. I cared about them like real people.

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     It’s such an odd book, and only works so well because it is told from the mind and words of its hilarious narrator. Take away that narrator and you have a creepy, demented story about a girl in love with her cousin in the middle of war-torn Europe. That’s how the movie feels; hollow, weird, not quite right. A really great independent low-budget film can be the best thing in the world; better than the most spectacular CGI-ridden blockbusters. But a bad independent movie can be just plain unbearable, worse than any mega-budget superhero flick that studios churn out each summer. How I Live Now is next to intolerable. All the major plot points remain but you’re not inside Daisy’s head so it just doesn't work. I found myself not liking the Daisy in the film at all, although she’s played by an actress who usually turns in nice, nuanced performances in such films as Hanna and Atonement. A book so rooted in a character’s thoughts can’t be filmed without losing the essence of the storytelling. It is lost on How I Live Now, leaving you without much to enjoy.

     The book is beautiful and skillfully written. Daisy is a wonderful and original main character. Her story is heartbreaking and vast and timeless. The filmmakers fumbled big time when adapting the story but as stated before, it would be impossible to properly adapt this book. Skip the movie, but don’t delay and read the book as soon as you can.