Flesh and Blood

Picking up Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood was like a breath of fresh air in this project. A lot of the books that have been sitting around my apartment forever have been sitting around for a reason: I had something better to read. But this book made me realize what my very favorite kind of book is: sweeping novels that follow multiple generations of a family, preferably through most of the twentieth century. Bonus points if the first generation emigrates to America.

Flesh and Blood, which I liked even more than The Hours (which I really really liked!), is all of those things. Constantine Stassos, the patriarch of the novel, moves to New York from Greece around the fifties. We follow his children and his children's children through the sexual revolution of the seventies and the AIDS epidemic of the eighties and nineties, clashing constantly with Constantine's old world ideals. Constantine is a contractor and makes his fortune building track homes. There's an interesting commentary on the cheapening of building standards and the market for cheap houses as more and more people moved to the suburbs and wanted single family homes.

I just couldn't put this book down. Granted, I started on a cross-country flight, so I didn't have a lot of other options, but I breezed through the first 350 pages in two days. I was flying to New York to go to BookExpo, where I was happy to learn Michael Cunningham has a new novel coming out this fall: By Nightfall, which is schedule to release in late September. Here's hoping it's as good as Flesh and Blood!