Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #297531 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Synopsis
The epic saga of three generations of an American family follows the Stassos family through periods of ambition, love, violence, and change, focusing on the turbulent lives of the Stassos children.

Customer Reviews

Engrossing family saga
Covering many years and concluding well in the future, this family saga centres on the lives of three children, including the son who is gay, and their parents a Greek immigrant and his Italian wife.
Of the children, Susan readily marries to escape he father; Billy goes to Harvard; and Zoë takes up a free lifestyle in New York. Each finds love in his or her own way, and of course the problems that go with such. As the children in turn have children their lives become part of the saga. Each member of the family is a distinct and very individual character, from the down to earth, physical, abusive and self made patriarch Constantine, his sensitive wife Mary, the rather prim Susan, level headed Billy who is gay and perhaps the most endearing member of the family, and Zoë who is into free love and drugs. The one outsider to the family who figures strongly in the story is Cassandra, Zoë's flamboyant transvestite and very caring friend, and an appealing individual.
Between them they face innumerable troubles including divorce, abuse, illness, discrimination, drugs, AIDS, adultery, suicide, death, and family rejection. But these troubles are tempered with the more positive, essentially the love that binds a family, and the love that some find beyond the family, including gay love. As the saga draws to its conclusion way in the future it is the less conventional family members, those at times rejected, who come through with credit and prove to be the true survivors.
Flesh and Blood is an engrossing family drama with vividly drawn and diverse characters, a very moving and ultimately heart warming story.

Wonderful read A Reader from East Yorks
This is one of the best books I have ever read. I felt I was actually IN the family, part of them. Michael Cunningham writes with such marvellous insight into a famly's feelings, hopes and disappointments. The characters are so believable, they could have been my own family. I can't wait to read the rest of his novels.

"A chaos of yearning...love...hunger...bottomless grief."
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. Mary Whipple