It took me a while to finish this on account of being busy with university. I enjoyed the book over all. One point of critique is that I found Rachel Cusk used a very excessive amount of metaphors and simile's. This became apparent when I noticed a few on one page and began noticing it as a consistent aspect of her writing. That is not to say the book was bad, more to the point that she compared things using the work "like", like this, like that etc, a lot which could have been improved upon.

The story paints a moving picture of a group of British individuals having moved to a suburb where their lives seem to be stagnating. The over all theme seemed to be that of living, you've got to live... living is memories, and in making memories we live etc. I enjoyed this. There was also the theme of settling in, and how many people may seem happy from the perspective of others, but in fact are often very dissatisfied with life, even when they, to us, have seemingly no reason to be. It's that stagnation that can be harmful.

The narrative at a few points I found a bit dull or repetitive, particularly emphasised by the over use of "like". I would like to have seen things described in more diverse ways than stating one things is like another over and over.

All of this said, I enjoyed the book. It gets 3 stars because of the dull bits, the "like"'s, and the repetition of the narrative. The dialogue is very intriguing in this, which made me want to give this a 4/5, but I couldn't quite give it that. Not having read anything about the book, I was thrown off, thinking initially that it was a book of various unrelated stories about different characters living in Arlington Park. It took me a while oddly to pick up on that. I quite enjoyed how all the characters converged at a family dinner at the end and the awkward tensions that ensued as a result of the meeting of these 8 men and women (4 couples), whom are quite different from one and other, though similar in the fact that they've all come to seemingly stagnate in this suburb.

It's a quick read, a revealing look at the lives of middle aged British women who've come to settle down and the tensions that can result from this settling.