Arlington Park: A Novel
by Rachel Cusk
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 234)
Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
Anyone who feels stuck with their lives
I just finished this. This book is very similar to her other book THE LUCKY ONES. I feel like Rachel Cusk is the only person who can get away with depicting motherhood and marriage as utterly miserable and still make it seem real. The first half was slow going but I liked the second half. Basically this book is about women stuck in a middle-class suburb who hate their lives. There is an overwhelming feeling of being trapped. They are so busy being wives and mothers they feel they have no t...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
Depressed middle-aged women
This book was interesting in that it took a more unique perspective on the woman's role within the family and her unspoken thoughts. However, this novelty didn't last long when it became apparent that there was really very little distinguishing any of the female characters from the others: they were all depressed, dissatisfied, unloved and unloving. In some ways the self-narrative voice which described the relationships the mothers had with their children or husbands was disturbing in its detach...more
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Read in January, 2008
The story follows a handful of British woman, trapped and desperate in their suburban existences, over the course of a single day. There are echoes of Virginia Woolf in here somewhere -- the stream of consciousness, the focus on women -- and I found Rachel Cusk's writing very effective and sometimes absolutely gorgeous.
With a few exceptions, the story was unremittingly bleak, with one of the women asserting (convincingly) that her husband had murdered her by marrying her and moving her out ...more
With a few exceptions, the story was unremittingly bleak, with one of the women asserting (convincingly) that her husband had murdered her by marrying her and moving her out ...more
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Read in October, 2007
I read a review of this book months ago in The Week magazine. It said Rachel Cusk writes beautiful sentences, and she renders the lives of suburban moms expertly. The reviewer said something like You keep hoping something will happen to these women, but nothing ever does. So I went into it prepared for nothing to happen, and I thought that was the absolute beauty of it. These women living the life to be envied by the starving millions and by the laboring millions, these women who on the give...more
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Read in May, 2008
I started this book a couple times before it actually took. I never know whether it is me or the book that causes it to happen though. However, I am glad I read it when I did. This book looks into the suffocating, stagnant lives of several women in this upscale suburb of London. Being pregnant, looking at how I want to approach the transition to motherhood, and redefining my sense of self to include mother are all topics that have been on the forefront of my mind. This book provides a good remin...more
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Read in January, 2008
An interesting story of upper-middle class women living in a London suburb. They seem generally unhappy with their lot, and stuck in a world of raising children and preparing dinner parties. Four of them spend a day together at a local mall, followed by a dinner party with three of them and another couple. On the one hand, it might be easy to feel sorry for these unsatisfied, unfulfilled women, but as they tell their stories, it seems clear that they've all chosen this life, and not always for t...more
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Read in November, 2007
Let me just start by saying that Cusk's prose is practically perfect--every sentence is poetic and eloquent and fraught with purpose and meaning. Although she depicts one side of motherhood (the mind-numbingly boring, annoying, miserable side), she fails to accurately capture the complicated nuances of it overall, which in turn, made me like her writing less and less as the book wore on so that by the end, I thought, "Whew--finally I'm done with all of these horrid characters." I wante...more
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Read in March, 2007
recommends it for:
people looking for reasons to remain childless.
This short book was a stark chronicle of one night and day in the intertwining lives of 5 youngish mothers living in the same London suburb, Arlington Park. I was turned on to it by a favorable review I read in The Atlantic Monthly. Most of the adult characters (with the exceptions of Juliet and Maisie) were unsympathetic and shallow: the various women viewed their children as nuisances, burdens they longed to set aside for a sho...more
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Read in February, 2008
Amazingly written and equally unbearable and bleak. The utter desolation of these privileged, godless British mothers was enough to depress the bejeebies out of me for the duration of the three days it took me to read it. Rachel Cusk is an inarguably brilliant writer, but my goodness! I could relate in many ways to the ambivalence and even fleeting hatred of one's spouse and children - it is real, and she is wise to remind us to acknowledge the dark side of the fairy tale as universal and &qu...more
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Read in May, 2008
Das Buch handelt von Frauen aus gehobenen mittelständischen Familien, die in Arlington Park ( ein fiktiver Vorort Londons) leben.
Es wird das Leben verschiedener Frauen betrachtet. Ihnen allen zu eigen ist eine innerliche Unzufriedenheit und Leere.
Sie sind versunken in ihrem täglichen trott.
Manche stellen sich die Frage: War das alles im Leben?
Ich habe noch nie so viel Hoffnungslosigkeit und Fantasielosigkeit die hinter einer gutbürgerlichen Fassade versteckt wird, erlebt.
Dies...more
Es wird das Leben verschiedener Frauen betrachtet. Ihnen allen zu eigen ist eine innerliche Unzufriedenheit und Leere.
Sie sind versunken in ihrem täglichen trott.
Manche stellen sich die Frage: War das alles im Leben?
Ich habe noch nie so viel Hoffnungslosigkeit und Fantasielosigkeit die hinter einer gutbürgerlichen Fassade versteckt wird, erlebt.
Dies...more
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recommends it for:
no one.
When this book originally came out, I remember reading good reviews. I am a bit baffled as to why. The story takes place during the course of one day. It tells the story of several women who are all essentially ambivalent (sometimes at best) about their husbands, children and lives in general. The story itself is a rather bleak one--a bunch of women who got the lives they wanted only to find that they didn't want them. It is hard to feel terribly sad for a group of bored upper middle class ...more
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Read in March, 2008
Incredible writing, but a darned depressing view of motherhood and marriage. The story follows one day in the lives of 5-6 woman who all live in a town called Arlington Park, and each of them is seething with bitterness and resentment. Juliet was my favorite character because she was darkly comedic; the other women were simply somewhat horrid, as were their kids, but again, the writing was spectacular; I just wish it had presented a slightly more balanced view of domestic life. Most of the moms ...more
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I love Rachel Cusk. Her characters think, say, and do the terrible things no one wants to admit that she thinks about. This book was the first thing I read by her. I could do without the little chapters about the weather in the park, but they're infrequent, and you could skip right over them without losing anything.
I definitely will read more of her work. She writes so fearlessly in a way that too few women writers do. (Or at least so few women writers who do are rewarded for it, thus we don...more
I definitely will read more of her work. She writes so fearlessly in a way that too few women writers do. (Or at least so few women writers who do are rewarded for it, thus we don...more
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Read in September, 2007
I have bought it. I love the thought of buying books, and doing it, but I do it very seldomly. But now I have and I really look forward to reading it.
I have decided to read it again when I have a child, or children, and perhaps a husband, at least my own home. Perhaps I will relate more to it, and understand it more then. I gave it to my mother to read.
I liked it though, somehow. Perhaps a little because I had set my mind on liking it before I started reading it.
I have decided to read it again when I have a child, or children, and perhaps a husband, at least my own home. Perhaps I will relate more to it, and understand it more then. I gave it to my mother to read.
I liked it though, somehow. Perhaps a little because I had set my mind on liking it before I started reading it.
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This is a series of short stories about one neighborhood outside of London on one rainy day. The women and there families are dealing with a lot of the same issues; loosing your identity to your family, connecting with your spouse, what is a good mother, what is a good child, what does it mean to be a woman?
I found it to be an interesting story, but you have to wade through the long descriptions of the weather and the neighborhood.
I found it to be an interesting story, but you have to wade through the long descriptions of the weather and the neighborhood.
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Abbie
No wonder this made the shortlist for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction this year. Very British, Cusk is a female Julian Barnes (that's supposed to be a compliment), catching those telling moments of dialogue and silence between people, esp. men and women. Her opening description of the suburb of Arlington Park makes me see it more vividly than if it had been made into a film by Stephen Frears.
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Read in August, 2007
Cusk creates characters in desperation from spirit-crushing maternal responsibility. Some were unbelievable to me, others were agonizingly spot-on. I think every mother has experienced the loss of self in the mundanity of motherhood, making this one sadly relatable, even downright depressing. Worthwhile, however, for its harsh reality, mood-creating prose, and for reader/character commiseration.
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Read in July, 2008
This book is very well written but DEPRESSING especially for a new mom. The book follows multiple housewives in a suburb of London. They are all a bit depressed, have bad relationships with their husbands, hate middle age, and are detached from their kids. That being said, it was very well written. It made me glad that I'm going back to work?!?!?!/
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Read in July, 2008
Rachel Cusk's writing is fearless and unapologetic. I love that the inner dialogue of some of her characters mirrors my own, particularly on motherhood. Many of the characters seemed to wonder how they got to where they are-lonely in the "perfect life". Others seemed so superficial I couldn't relate, but I could certainly pick them out in a lineup.
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Read in November, 2007
I like to wallow in the minor miseries of motherhood, but even I thought this was a little hard to take at times. I enjoyed it in spite of the dull throbbing headache brought on by the characters constant low grade whining. I liked maisie the best. She reminded me of rachel cusk's voice in a life's work. the other women just depressed me.
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