In the Cut

In the Cut

3.18 of 5 stars 3.18  ·  rating details  ·  983 ratings  ·  154 reviews
Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Jane Campion and starring Meg Ryan
In theaters this fall
By day, Frannie teaches her writing students about irony and language in all its nuance and unspoken meaning. By night, she compiles a secret dictionary of street slang. One night in the basement of a bar she walks in on an intimate moment between a man and a woman. The...more
Hardcover, 180 pages
Published by Macmillan _ (first published 1995)
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Community Reviews

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Ken
In The Cut was a quick read. It kept me turning the pages, wanting to know what would happen. The main character intrigued me at first. And that's about as close as I can get to praise for this book.

If you can stomach gruesome, twisted violence and enjoy analyzing it on a symbolic or literary level, then you may appreciate this book more than I. I don't think this book had anywhere near enough to say, however, to justify its sickening level of brutality.

At its heart, this is a mediocre whodunit....more
Lisa Greer
this book is amazing and one that many probably haven't read. I stumbled upon it in the library one day. It haunted me for days. Things aren't always as they seem in matters of love, sexuality, etc. The ending is haunting.
Stacey
Mar 24, 2008 Stacey rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who like reading good sex...
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Travis
I can imagine just how the process for dreaming up this story must have started, and Susanna Moore deserves kudos and praise for following her imagination down that particular rabbit hole.

(The rabbit hole in question, by the way, goes something like this: Author is kind of lying around her airy, light-filled NYC brownstone one afternoon, and a thought occurs to her--I wonder if anyone has died while having sex--and this causes her to consider the way they would be most likely to die, and that i...more
Jerod Scott
I read this book in one sitting (just now, actually) so that must mean I liked it. It's strange though. That's not a bad thing, really, it just isn't quite like anything I've ever read before, and I can't quite figure out what to think of it yet.

What impressed me most, probably, was the writer's ability to convey a protagonist who was searching for something without seeming to consciously realize that anything was even missing. Interesting, that... and well done.

To me, this is a story about trus...more
Jessica
Some books while a good read lack a certain something I couldn't even begin to say what it is that In The Cut is missing but it in my opinion lacks a je ne sais qua.

Having said that I still enjoyed this book. It's sad lonely and despite the protagonists brains and all she had going for her she seemed so lonely. Lost trying to fill a void that she didn't even know was there.

I skipped a couple pages and it didn't make any difference. For a short read it packs a lot in and while there is a lot of...more
Tim Niland
This book was on Ethan Iverson's list of the ten most shocking thrillers and it lives up to its billing as a very satisfying mystery/thriller. The protagonist is a female literature professor at an unnamed New York City college. When she meets one of her students at a bar, and inadvertently sees something she shouldn't, and sets off a chain of events that lead to a shocking conclusion. This was a well written book with nice elements of dark, dry wit, at least in the beginning before things start...more
switterbug (Betsey)
The ethereal writing of Moore reminds me of a female James Salter--a purposeful detachment that conveys the protagonist's (Frannie's) detachment from her own life. Startling ironies hint at Frannie's personal tragedies--accumulated and melancholied--heaped in a corner of her heart and cresting to bleed out onto the pages. It is this prose that creates a vivid depth of feeling and a taut, fresh, exciting rigor of momentum.
Frannie is a scholarly woman--a linguist and a Creative Writing professor...more
Haley
Feb 15, 2011 Haley rated it 5 of 5 stars
Shelves: gift, own
"In The Cut" begins as Frannie, a creative writing teacher in New York City, becomes entranced watching a brawny man receive a blowjob in the back of a bar. Frannie is stubborn and well-intentioned - in her free time she works on a book of slang and colloquialisms. She also gives her students her home address. Suddenly her desolate existence heats up when her student Cornelius consistently and inappropriately follows her around New York, and a detective visits to investigate local murders. Detec...more
Lowrha
It took a long, frustrating Chinatown bus ride for the first few chapters of this book to grasp my attention, but I'm glad it was the one I had with me. Moore suspends a dreamy, transitional mood that mesmerizes me. Her comments on the similarity between memories and dreams stick with me and help define what I mean--I feel parts of the story could have been from a book I read or a dream I had. I'm partial to books with writer protagonists, and the scattered notes on words throughout the book are...more
Lori
Susanna Moore's book is an edgy, taut, fast paced thriller. The story begins with Franny an NYU professor working with students from the projects in a writing class. This is a convenient relationship for her as she is able to work on her own book and fufill her obsessions with language forms, particularly slang usage in this area of NYC. Some professors comment on her inappropriately close relationship with her students as she often sees them outside of class to discuss their projects as well as...more
Nicola
When I first read In the Cut, I was swept up in its surface pleasures: the protagonist, Franny moves through seedy parts of New York City, but there’s a dark wonder to every scene; the poetry posted on the subway forms the backdrop to her story, as if it were placed there especially for her. As a teacher and writer, she rolls words on her tongue, obsessing over etymology, even dividing words into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It’s a wonderful world in which to immerse yourself. All of Franny’s experiences –...more
Mitch Duckworth
I've heard it called porn; I disagree.

If you've seen the movie, you know quite a lot about the book, but not enough. The film is fairly faithful to the novel (dare I say it?) right up to the end; there the film detours into the prescribed Hollywood ending. The movement of Ms. Moore's tale is not hindered by a sudden and violent path into cliche, but rushes on to its inevitable and powerful conclusion with satisfying drama and an oddly self-realized central character who remains true to her self...more
Vanessa
I picked this book up out of sheer perversity. Since this is billed as an erotic thriller, I should probably elaborate. Come closer, won't you?

So, the movie they made of this book. It has a good pedigree: interesting actors like Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Jason Leigh star (also starring but not very interesting is Meg Ryan) and Jane Campion directs. It's terrible. It's ludicrous. It is compellingly watchable in its awfulness like a grittily rendered "Showgirls." It's been airing on the cable late...more
Christina Marie Rau
I thought that In The Cut was going to be about boxing.

In The Cut by Susanna Moore is an erotic thriller. It does not involve a boxer of any kind, not even canine.

I was not expecting the main character to be a Creative Writing college professor who has an affinity for street slang. I was not expecting a very detailed description of a blow job in the first few pages. I was not expecting a very detailed description of bloody dismemberment anywhere in the book. Between sex and violence came storyli...more
Sabrina Robinson
I liked the raw sex scenes. That pretty much was the whole appeal for me.

Update- I just reread this and even the sex scenes weren't that good. I think the author was trying to hard to be artsy. In my reread I got the impression the author was trying to make the main character seem cerebral and deep but it just made for disjointed dialogue and forced interactions. I couldn't finish it the second time.
Jennifer
Jul 24, 2007 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Lokiec
Very strange book. Moore seems to hate her characters as much as Scott Smith hates his...she has no compassion for any of them and, as such, anything goes. The end is easily the most disturbing ending of any book I've ever read (Hollywood ditched the ending for the movie), sorta reminiscent of Blair Witch (in terms of making you say "holy crap, did that just happen?" vs supernatural). Not for the faint of heart.
Catalina
The only pages i considered getting close to a thriller were the last 10-15. Reading others talking about hard images, violence...i got worried: is my sensibility compromised?! :))
Reading other reviews is an interesting action as you get an insight of people personality and psychology! I've seen ppl saying Frannie's character is to be hated, the author hated her character, sex is bad and so on.
I had none of those impressions, I actually found Frannie a strong character: a women that knows her va...more
Trish
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Jessica
This is a sort of Looking For Mr. Goodbar-come-lately story about an ostensibly tough, sexually confident woman who likes to Sleep With Danger and becomes entangled with a sadistic murderer. Although atmospheric and sexually provocative, at heart this is really a damsel-in-distress-meets-serial-killer story that isn't particularly innovative or surprising.
Max Sebastian
I read this having seen the movie, and while I can see that for some people neither would appeal, I enjoyed both of them very much. I think the movie had mixed reviews, so would the book. It's troubling, disturbing, not massively long, and the message is as bleak as the ending (which was changed for the movie). But ultimately for me, this was beautifully written and a joy to read (other than the heart-wrenching resolution, perhaps).

This is all billed as an erotic thriller, but it's not particul...more
Evan
In the Cut was made into a movie just a scant few years ago by artsy feminist director Jane Campion, with Meg Ryan the all-American girl trying to pull the mid-life star comeback and the sexy image-changing turn (with Oscar-bait glum acting chops and the requisite nudity) in the role of the language scholar and teacher who succumbs to the pull of the seamy side of NYC. Shades of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, perhaps.

The book, in a nutshell, is about a divorced English teacher in New York, (Frannie in...more
Eve
To start from the beginning: saw the movie first. Campion is one of my favorite directors and this movie was something...something that haunted me for days and weeks and months, I actually watched it more than 20 times. It was by mistake that I came across the book at a shop. I bought it right away and felt that it will be if not more, than at least as good as the movie. Of course it goes onto a different ending, but .. BUT... The book is more haunting than the film. Saw many negative reviews re...more
Adam
I tore through this really quickly. It's probably not for everyone, but the combination of spare prose, precise language, graphic sex, and cooly observed violence really worked for me. Definitely worth reading, even if you've already seen the movie.
Kerri Turner
My feelings about this book are a little bit complicated. While I didn't really love it, I didn't hate it either. And it certainly kept me turing the pages, wanting to know what happened next.

There is some exceptional writing (in my humble opinion) in the book, which I thought was great to read. There were also a fair few passages - mainly in the dialogue - where I had no idea what the writer or characters were on about.

But the biggest problem for me was that the whole idea of the book, the 'who...more
Vinessa
Dark, disturbing, tight edgy writing. Have reread it at least four times. Great opening...tells the whole story without giving anything away...unexpected ending.
Anne
I liked her voice. A lot. But I'm still trying to figure out how this story is different from all the crap that lets rip with a strong female character, who has a dark sense of humor/fantasy that can't quite fight loneliness, a wide circle of friends across all kinds of tracks, and Lucite heels. And ends up dead after using "bad judgement," aka too much (intellectual) curiosity. This one @ the hands of a particularly fetishised Puerto Rican cop. "Mr. Goodbar" comes to mind, tho it was more since...more
Deborah Edwards
Aug 16, 2008 Deborah Edwards rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Maureen
A book as gorgeously crafted as it is tremendously disturbing. This teacher with a dark side tells us right from the start that she is doing something she knows she should not do and that her story will deal with irony and realism. Knowing that, we let her lead us into a brutal but tempting world of ironic twists and realistic hard edges that surround every new encounter or ominous remark, and every strangely erotic act or brush with kink. And through it all she expounds so brilliantly on litera...more
Stacy
If I had had time to rate this yesterday when I finished it, it would have been one star...zero stars, if goodreads allowed such things. However, I had time to think about it and realized that while it really was a quite terrible book, I've never read anything like it.

Frannie is a teacher of literature in New York City who runs a fairly unorthodox class...she holds no office hours, but allows students to come to her home or goes with them to bars to discuss their work. For a teacher and a city...more
Angela
This is an easy book to dislike; the graphic depictions of sex and graphic violence can be off-putting. But it is a satisfying and page-turning thriller with a poignant end that justifies the narrator's extreme drop down the rabbit hole. And it's rich with lit crit fodder, just looking at the narrator's relationship to language alone. I can understand why readers are so divided in their opinions on this book, but for me, I fall on the 'I thought it was good' side of the fence.
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In the Cut (Paperback)
In the Cut (Paperback)
In the Cut (Hardcover)
In the Cut  (Paperback)
In the Cut (Paperback)

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Susanna Moore is the author of the novels One Last Look, In the Cut, The Whiteness of Bones, Sleeping Beauties, and My Old Sweetheart, which won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for First Fiction, and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her nonfiction travel book, I Myself Have Seen It, was published by the National Geographic Society in...more
More about Susanna Moore...
The Life of Objects The Big Girls The Whiteness of Bones My Old Sweetheart One Last Look

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