38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant novel by the author of "The Hours", January 24, 2005
Basically there are two kinds of novels, those that detail a specific event (a love affair, a tragedy, etc) and those that just ramble hither and yon telling no specific story. As a rule, I'm not a big fan of novels that ramble. "Flesh and Blood" is a ramble. However, I was totally enthralled from start to finish. This is the story of the Stassos family. It begins in 1939 and ends in the present day. This is the most intimate portrait of a family I've ever read. Each of the characters is fully realized, drawn with a clarity that insists on presenting each as unique and individual. Each possess the basic ambiguities of characte and personality that define us as human beings. No one is without flaw. No one is always right or always wrong. Families love and hate, exhilarate and exasperate, praise and disparage in equal measure. There is joy and there is sorrow. I felt transported as I read this novel. It is one of the best that I have ever read. I couldn't stand setting it down, and couldn't wait to get back to it when I had. What better recommendation for a novel but that it was so involving I felt I was a silent character with a vested interest in the everyday existence of this truly American family? Michael Cunningham, author of "The Hours" and "A Home At the End of the World," is a modern master. READ THIS BOOK.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry in prose, July 18, 2000
Michael Cunningham's "Flesh and Blood" is in some ways a unique book. It is not the choice of the subject matter, a gripping family saga that starts with a young Greek immigrant and his Italo-American sweetheart and ends in the mist of the distant future, some 30 years from now. It's not even the vivid characters that populate this saga, characters that are in most cases complex and interesting enough to become almost real in one's mind's eye. What makes this book very special is the narrator voice, a voice that lifts mundane events that happen to regular people to an upper sphere, where those events and protagonists acquire a magic quality that is unlike anything else I read. It is the use of a highly original metaphoric language that enevlops the narrative with something that is almost poetry that makes this book a joy to read. My feeling is that Cunningham (perhaps because of his young age) has a better access to younger characters than to older ones, and in some cases the older characters lose some of their vividness and become more flat. Otherwise - this is an excellent book.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"A chaos of yearning...love...hunger...bottomless grief.", August 11, 2005
An intense family drama which begins in 1935 and ends in 2035, the novel revolves around Constantine Stassos, a Greek who emigrates to the U.S. and eventually marries Mary Cuccio, an Italian girl who also wants to escape her home. He eventually fathers three children--Susan, who marries young to escape her father; Billy, who goes off to Harvard and an alternative lifestyle; and Zoe, who leaves for a hippie life in New York. When the children end up as parents themselves, their children's lives are also traced, as they, too, look for independence and a form of escape.
Filled with passion, as each character tries to define his/her own life, often using love and sex as their springboards to new lives, the characters reflect the eras in which they live. This is both a strength and limitation in the novel: a wonderful sense of universality pervades the struggles of the characters through the various generations, but their specific struggles are typical of their periods and easy to predict.
The characters themselves are well developed, but though they all possess unique qualities and eccentricities, they are also examples of cultural stereotypes. Constantine is an up-by-the-bootstraps success as a developer, but he is less successful as a husband. Mary tries to be the perfect wife and mother and becomes frustrated. Susan, a brittle striver in a tepid marriage, has one perfect child. Billy is gay, and Zoe dabbles in drugs and free love. Constantine's grandchildren are a perfect preppie and an interracial child living in a single parent household.
The most vivid character in the novel ironically, is not a member of the family. S/he is Cassandra, Zoe's transvestite guardian angel, a character so vibrant and so full of life that she dominates the scenes in which she appears and is almost solely responsible for any humor in the novel. (A scene in which Mary has a phone conversation with her, not knowing she is physically a male, is darkly hilarious, and Mary's first meeting with her is unforgettable.)
As the characters face discrimination, an almost-incestuous relationship, gay initiation, drugs, AIDS, divorce, illness, suicide, unplanned pregnancy, family rejection, and death, they also discover the forces which bring families together. Even those who "escape" find themselves inevitably connected to their family past. The search for love, the need for independence, the enduring connections of family, and the importance of memory enliven this generational saga. Written in beautiful prose and filled with perfect details, the novel revolves around honest characters expressing real emotion and learning real lessons. n Mary Whipple
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