Flesh and Blood

The last book of the RA Favorite Books, well sort of… there is one that is out of print, so I will continue to look for it, but if the NYPL doesn’t have it, going to be hard to get my hands on it.  So back to the book I just finished, Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham.  It reminded me a great deal of the Jodi Picoult genre of books… get in as many social issues you can possibly do, but all in one family? %#$^#*, really?  Immigrant Constantine Stassos, a strange boy from Greek heritage, lives on a farm with his family.  He is the youngest of the clan and the rest of the story focuses on Constantine’s life – using yearly updates (not every year but skipping through the century) ending in 2035 with a look back on the next generation of Stassos.  The problem is the Stassos have lots of issues to face, don’t all families? Well, hopefully not as dire as this family! Constantine, to get over some of his fears, plants a garden (a metaphor for the planting he is incapable of doing throughout his life).  Con, as he is often referred, takes the dirt from the rich soil outside the farm into his mouth and carries it to another location at the farm.  Here we go… enter Mary, a sixteen year-old neighbor whom Con falls in love, marries, and then begins his life.  Con is an abusive young man who seemingly is incapable of love and human connection as he ends up terrorizing his first two children, sexually assaulting his daughter, physically abusing his son, and mentally abusing his wife, though he leaves youngest daughter Zoe alone ( Zoe ends up with the most eccentric of lives of the family).  The book is a relatively quick read that clearly reveals the author’s own (my opinion, not written anywhere) bizarre growing up process (I’d say)!  How else could he have made some of this up… wow.  If not, I’d say his writing was a bit too predictable, once the reader figured out every turn another thing would happen… In this age of dysfunctional family Cunningham makes the Stassos on the end of the continuum, great for a movie on TLC or Lifetime. Cunningham presents flirtations with sex throughout, unforbidden sex, forbidden sex, innocent sex, and child sex.  I guess all readers will feel some level of connection – or not.  There is even the “Republican” sister and her husband who seemingly have “bland sex” as compared to when she has her full sexual fulfillment by the “tree surgeon” whom she has an affair.  From AIDs (youngest sister contracts it after shooting up or was it from her prostitution business?) to racial-mix relationships, to homosexual love (son, Billy, or Will as he becomes to be known later in the story), to more extra martial affairs, yes Constantine falls prey after falling for his buxom secretary.  Let’s not forget that mom gets arrested for shoplifting, pops valium, and becomes a saleswoman helping others get their perfect outfits.  I must be forgetting something, oh yeah, grandson drowns after having an illicit sexual exploit with his male cousin on the beach, thinking his idolized grandfather saw it happen.  There are some drug addictions as well, hey it’s 1970s (at some point in the book)…  I know I am leaving something out of this story, yeah that’s right the lover of youngest daughter, an older drag queen whom also gets infected by AIDS.  Don’t get me wrong, these are important issues but presented as they are it just seems to be one “over the top” book.  I was hoping daughter Susan, whom was molested by her father, would have at least confronted him.  Life doesn’t fit into fine shaped little boxes, does it? Heck no.  But if they are as complicated as the Stassos, let’s find a way to package a bit more humanely.  This was too over the top for me.  Sorry Mr. Cunningham but this story was a bit much.  So did the houses that Con made so poorly ever fall down?  I was thinking that he would lose his fortune and be found out for the fraud he was, that might have been a better ending.  Where was the guilt, I guess he was incapable even after his only loved “son” died.