For me, there's a weird, unfathomable gulf — I almost wrote gulp — between the completion of a novel and its publication. Some days this duration feels interminable, as though the book has...
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Arlington Park is well written and digs deep into truth. It's about women-real and flawed. It's about marriage. It's about not only the lives we plan to live and choose to live, but the lives we end up living. In an article written in 2005, Cusk said, "I remain fascinated by where you go as a woman once you are a mother, and if you ever come back." Arlington Park was one of the best books I read in 2008, and a new addition to my all-time favorite books. It was so good, in fact, that I read it again in December--twice in one year.
The first sentence: "All night the rain fell on Arlington Park." The falling of rain appears like a refrain throughout the book. The rain falls on everyone in Arlington Park. It falls on all of us.
The novel is divided into ten unmarked sections: 1-the rain fell; 2-Juliet; 3-Amanda; 4-Christine, Maisie and Stephanie at the mall; 5-Solly; 6-in the park/the rain had stopped; 7-Juliet; 8-Maisie; 9-Christine; and 10-party at Christine's with Juliet, Maisie, and Maggie.
The first time I read it, I was so taken with Juliet that I didn't want to leave her to switch to Amanda. This time, it did not feel like a brusque change, but felt right. Because it's not just about one of us; it's about all of us.
Here's a little flavor of what you have to look forward to:
-Juliet about a recording of a song by Ravel: "The sound of it brought tears to Juliet's eyes. It was the voice, that woman's voice, so solitary and powerful, so-transcendent. It made Juliet think she could transcend it all, this little house with its stained carpets, its shopping, its flawed people, transcend the grey, rain-sodden distances of Arlington Park; transcend, even her own body, where bitterness lay like lead in the veins. She could open somewhere like a flower...open out all the petals packed inside her."
-Solly about her inability to communicate with a Japanese student renting out their extra room: "...she became aware of how much of her lay shrouded in this inarticulable darkness."
-Solly: "Suddenly she saw her life as a breeding ground, a community under a rock...There was a lack of light, a lack of higher purpose to it all. How could she have forgotten to find out what else there was? How could she have stayed there, under her rock, down in the mulch, and forgotten to take a look outside and see what was going on? All at once she didn't know what she'd been thinking of."
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(3 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
Although I have enjoyed many of Rachel Cusk’s books, this one I didn’t want to finish. There are other opinions: it was long listed for the 2005 Booker Prize.
In the Fold is narrated by a man and full of dialogue. Perhaps an important step in a writer’s development is to try something different. It gives you a reference point: You do that better than this. And then you can go boldly forth.
My favorite thing about the book is the name of the country home where most of the action takes place. It’s called Egypt–no explanation given. My favorite line refers to Egypt: “This is our home. It’s the place that matters, not the people in it.”
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(2 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)
A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother is Rachel Cusk’s fourth book. My favorite line, because of the unwritten premise, comes in the Introduction, where she writes, “…so it would be a contradiction to write a book about motherhood without explaining to some degree how I found the time to write it.”
The answer is that her partner quit his job to take care of the children “while Rachel writes her book about looking after the children.”
In the author’s words, this book “describes a period in which time seemed to go round in circles rather than in any chronological order.” Very quickly, the baby develops colic. Surely, Cusk writes, there is a better word for this, some sort of German word meaning lifegrief.
At the end of three months: “I see that she has become somebody. I realize, too, that the crying has stopped, that she has survived the first pain of existence and out of it wrought herself. And she has wrought me, too, because although I have not helped or understood, I have been there all along and this, I suddenly and certainly know, is motherhood; this mere sufficiency, this presence.”
My only quarrel with the memoir is that perhaps a better title would have been simply On Becoming a Mother, as these pages are limited to the initial weeks and months after the baby is born, to this transition time of becoming a mother, which the author so clearly does.
A book to read before you get pregnant, as well as afterwards (if you can stay awake long enough to read.) And don’t forget Anne Lamott’s, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year. Two books that speak the truth.
The Country Life, published in 1997, is Rachel Cusk’s third novel. She is spacing them out like children–one every two years. As opposed to The Temporary, the writing is solid throughout, continuously propelling the reader forward. The first sentence tells you that the narrator is supposed to take the four o’clock train from Charing Cross to Buckley. The author then does a very good job of keeping you reading by supplying all sorts of details regarding the departure (although I wanted even more) without stating what Stella, the protagonist, will be doing when she arrives at this new destination or what specifically has caused her to make the journey.
Stella is an intriguing character from the first page. Late in the novel, she says, “I don’t know what love means. If it’s just a feeling, then it can stop. I don’t see the point of trying so hard to preserve it.”
The Country Life was a delightful book to read. My three favorite lines:
“We are all, in our journey through life, navigating towards some special, dreamed-of place.”
“In a larger house, a knock or ring is a plea for entrance; in a small place such as my own, it is a demand.”
“…I turned off the light, closed my eyes, and forced myself, as one would force the head of a man beneath water to drown him, into sleep.”
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(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
It’s like watching a house being built–seeing how a writer develops over time. The foundation: Saving Agnes, published in 1993. Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award (now the Costa First Novel Award), Saving Agnes is chick-litty in subject matter; but after all, the author would have only been 26 when this book was published. It also takes Cusk too many words to say what she has to say.
Nevertheless it’s a great beginning for a writer, and it contains some engaging images, like “a row of teenagers sat on a bench like crows on a telegraph wire,” and ”Days when she was expecting a call stretched out before her like empty motorways….” It also contains some interesting lines like “She’d never known loneliness until she’d had company.” And this combination of an intriguing idea and an image to match: “She had changed, she knew, but she didn’t quite know how or when. Like an old car, the addition of new parts over the years had left little of her original material, but her form remained unaltered. Could she, she wondered, still be said to be the same person?”
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Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
Cynthia Newberry Martin, January 25, 2009
Arlington Park is well written and digs deep into truth. It's about women-real and flawed. It's about marriage. It's about not only the lives we plan to live and choose to live, but the lives we end up living. In an article written in 2005, Cusk said, "I remain fascinated by where you go as a woman once you are a mother, and if you ever come back." Arlington Park was one of the best books I read in 2008, and a new addition to my all-time favorite books. It was so good, in fact, that I read it again in December--twice in one year.The first sentence: "All night the rain fell on Arlington Park." The falling of rain appears like a refrain throughout the book. The rain falls on everyone in Arlington Park. It falls on all of us.
The novel is divided into ten unmarked sections: 1-the rain fell; 2-Juliet; 3-Amanda; 4-Christine, Maisie and Stephanie at the mall; 5-Solly; 6-in the park/the rain had stopped; 7-Juliet; 8-Maisie; 9-Christine; and 10-party at Christine's with Juliet, Maisie, and Maggie.
The first time I read it, I was so taken with Juliet that I didn't want to leave her to switch to Amanda. This time, it did not feel like a brusque change, but felt right. Because it's not just about one of us; it's about all of us.
Here's a little flavor of what you have to look forward to:
-Juliet about a recording of a song by Ravel: "The sound of it brought tears to Juliet's eyes. It was the voice, that woman's voice, so solitary and powerful, so-transcendent. It made Juliet think she could transcend it all, this little house with its stained carpets, its shopping, its flawed people, transcend the grey, rain-sodden distances of Arlington Park; transcend, even her own body, where bitterness lay like lead in the veins. She could open somewhere like a flower...open out all the petals packed inside her."
-Solly about her inability to communicate with a Japanese student renting out their extra room: "...she became aware of how much of her lay shrouded in this inarticulable darkness."
-Solly: "Suddenly she saw her life as a breeding ground, a community under a rock...There was a lack of light, a lack of higher purpose to it all. How could she have forgotten to find out what else there was? How could she have stayed there, under her rock, down in the mulch, and forgotten to take a look outside and see what was going on? All at once she didn't know what she'd been thinking of."
(3 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
In the Fold by Rachel Cusk
Cynthia Newberry Martin, January 25, 2009
Although I have enjoyed many of Rachel Cusk’s books, this one I didn’t want to finish. There are other opinions: it was long listed for the 2005 Booker Prize.In the Fold is narrated by a man and full of dialogue. Perhaps an important step in a writer’s development is to try something different. It gives you a reference point: You do that better than this. And then you can go boldly forth.
My favorite thing about the book is the name of the country home where most of the action takes place. It’s called Egypt–no explanation given. My favorite line refers to Egypt: “This is our home. It’s the place that matters, not the people in it.”
(2 of 4 readers found this comment helpful)
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother by Rachel Cusk
Cynthia Newberry Martin, January 25, 2009
A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother is Rachel Cusk’s fourth book. My favorite line, because of the unwritten premise, comes in the Introduction, where she writes, “…so it would be a contradiction to write a book about motherhood without explaining to some degree how I found the time to write it.”The answer is that her partner quit his job to take care of the children “while Rachel writes her book about looking after the children.”
In the author’s words, this book “describes a period in which time seemed to go round in circles rather than in any chronological order.” Very quickly, the baby develops colic. Surely, Cusk writes, there is a better word for this, some sort of German word meaning lifegrief.
At the end of three months: “I see that she has become somebody. I realize, too, that the crying has stopped, that she has survived the first pain of existence and out of it wrought herself. And she has wrought me, too, because although I have not helped or understood, I have been there all along and this, I suddenly and certainly know, is motherhood; this mere sufficiency, this presence.”
My only quarrel with the memoir is that perhaps a better title would have been simply On Becoming a Mother, as these pages are limited to the initial weeks and months after the baby is born, to this transition time of becoming a mother, which the author so clearly does.
A book to read before you get pregnant, as well as afterwards (if you can stay awake long enough to read.) And don’t forget Anne Lamott’s, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year. Two books that speak the truth.
The Country Life by Rachel Cusk
Cynthia Newberry Martin, January 25, 2009
The Country Life, published in 1997, is Rachel Cusk’s third novel. She is spacing them out like children–one every two years. As opposed to The Temporary, the writing is solid throughout, continuously propelling the reader forward. The first sentence tells you that the narrator is supposed to take the four o’clock train from Charing Cross to Buckley. The author then does a very good job of keeping you reading by supplying all sorts of details regarding the departure (although I wanted even more) without stating what Stella, the protagonist, will be doing when she arrives at this new destination or what specifically has caused her to make the journey.Stella is an intriguing character from the first page. Late in the novel, she says, “I don’t know what love means. If it’s just a feeling, then it can stop. I don’t see the point of trying so hard to preserve it.”
The Country Life was a delightful book to read. My three favorite lines:
“We are all, in our journey through life, navigating towards some special, dreamed-of place.”
“In a larger house, a knock or ring is a plea for entrance; in a small place such as my own, it is a demand.”
“…I turned off the light, closed my eyes, and forced myself, as one would force the head of a man beneath water to drown him, into sleep.”
(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk
Cynthia Newberry Martin, January 25, 2009
It’s like watching a house being built–seeing how a writer develops over time. The foundation: Saving Agnes, published in 1993. Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award (now the Costa First Novel Award), Saving Agnes is chick-litty in subject matter; but after all, the author would have only been 26 when this book was published. It also takes Cusk too many words to say what she has to say.Nevertheless it’s a great beginning for a writer, and it contains some engaging images, like “a row of teenagers sat on a bench like crows on a telegraph wire,” and ”Days when she was expecting a call stretched out before her like empty motorways….” It also contains some interesting lines like “She’d never known loneliness until she’d had company.” And this combination of an intriguing idea and an image to match: “She had changed, she knew, but she didn’t quite know how or when. Like an old car, the addition of new parts over the years had left little of her original material, but her form remained unaltered. Could she, she wondered, still be said to be the same person?”
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
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