Flesh and Blood

Michael Cunningham's "Flesh and Blood," is one of the best novels I've read so far this year. Constantine Stassos is a Greek immigrant with ambition, drive and a fierce temper. His wife Mary works hard to maintain the ideal or at least the illusion of perfection in her family. Constantine's three children are each touched, destroyed, or changed by their parents' behavior, especially their father's. Cunningham's characterization is brilliant. Every thought, every action, every belief held by the people in "Flesh and Blood" rings true and results in a stunning display of cause and effect. Susan, the eldest daughter is forever changed by her father's lack of boundaries, and Zoe, the youngest, the one named for Constantine's Greek heritage, is essentially ignored until the other two children have grown up and moved away from home. Constantine shows a unique tenderness to this wild child as they work together in the garden. There's something different about Billy, Constantine's only son, and that fact haunts Constantine, a feeling left unsaid-at least in the verbal sense-but always there between them nonetheless. Here's an excerpt: "When Constantine hit him he felt he was obliterating a weakness in the house. He was cauterizing a wound. The back of his hand struck Billy's jaw hard, scraped across his teeth with a cleansing burn. He heard Mary's scream from a distance. Billy's head snapped back and Constantine hit him again, this time with the heel of his hand, a smack solid and sure as a hammer driving a nail deep into pine." The novel opens with a scene in which Constantine as a young boy works hard to make things grow, going so far as to carry bits of rich soil in his mouth so that he may drop it onto his poorly soiled plot of a garden. The image of the garden shows up again when he and his daughter Zoe work to produce beautiful vegetables, loaded with hidden caustic pesticides. "She raised the tomato to her mouth, and Constantine had an urge to yell, `Don't it's poisoned.' Which was ridiculous. It was no more poisoned than most of what people ate, and probably less. But as he watched her bite into the tomato, a chill shot through his heart." A stunning metaphor for the family affected by Constantine's devotion and poisonous weaknesses.

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.

Training his perceptive eye on one family, Cunningham explores contemporary - and timeless - issues of American culture in a voice that combines emotional power with sensitive portrayals of character.Structured chronologically by year, the novel is organized in sharply etched vignettes, from which patterns of personality emerge. It opens in 1935 with a vivid glimpse of Constantine's hardscrabble life as the son of a Greek peasant farmer, then jumps to 1949, with Constantine, the young immigrant, in love with Mary. "He had a second life now, inside her head. He worried, almost every moment, that she would realize her mistake."By Easter 1958, Mary, the working class girl from Newark, has three children. Striving for perfection in a cake shaped like a bunny, she is harried by the demands of her family and too little money. When their son, Billy, wakes while she and Constantine are filling Easter baskets, spoiling the surprise of them, Constantine loses his temper. "He might have conquered his own anger if Billy had remained defiant. But Billy began to cry and without quite having decided to, Constantine was shaking him....." The scene grows, Mary frantic, throwing herself over Billy. "Constantine was in a passion now, a crackling white glory. Delirious, he knocked the baskets off the table. Jelly beans sprayed like stones against the walls. Chocolate lambs broke on the floor, plastic eggs cracked open and spilled out the trinkets Mary had hidden inside. He started to ram his fist into the cake."But instead of destroying the cake, Constantine falls into a passion of regret, begging forgiveness from his son and wife. "She neither welcomed nor recoiled from his touch."This is a pattern set for life; Mary striving for perfection in the appearance of things, Constantine raging at the imperfections of his wife, his son, the life he had envisioned for himself in 1949.And when Constantine stikes it rich, comparatively, by becoming partners with a Greek contractor building tract homes, the money solves nothing. Mary worries about fitting in in affluent suburbia; her eyes are opened to new horrors of failure.Billy, especially, is a disappointment to his father. Brooding, effeminate, Billy grows increasingly bitter and isolated. After a particularly violent scene, the teenager Billy remarks to his older sister, Susan, " 'Have you noticed how he never breaks stuff?' "Only Susan seems to have a handle on life. She takes after her mother, follows the rules, fits in with the cheerleaders and football players, has a shot at becoming Homecoming Queen. She's the peacemaker and on the night Billy vows to someday kill his father she goes to Constantine with soothing words and, finally, feeling the power sexuality can bring her, a most undaughterly kiss.Zoe, the youngest, is an unknown. There's something wild and feral about her but only Zoe seems to stay completely clear of domestic storms.Reeling from the loss of the Homecoming Queen crown, seeing herself clearly bra

Twenty-four hours after finishing FLESH AND BLOOD, my goosebumps are only now subsiding. It's rare to read a novel with multiple generations where each character sticks in your mind -- often authors lose their readers when they switch to the next generation, but Cunningham keeps the older generation alive in our minds and on the pages as he lets us get to know the "kids." Every relationship is fully realized, and there are certainly a wide variety of relationships in this satisfying book! Poetic and oh-so-real. People don't have major epiphanies right and left, Hollywood-style. They change very slowly over a long time. Cunningham is a compassionate chronicler of human frailty.

Although I loved The Hours, I approached this book - written several years earlier - with modest expectations. Twenty pages in, I realized I'd stumbled upon one of those rare books that engages the reader on several different levels: a deeply moving saga held aloft by beautiful writing. This book offers a resonant, complex, and often painful reverie on the mysteries of identity, what is passed down from one generation to the next through blood and spirit.