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The Lucky Ones: A Novel
The Lucky Ones is a novel about creating and sustaining life during times of great transformation. The five people whose lives converge here are also haunted by family -- the longing for love, the struggle to connect. A young pregnant mother wrestles with utterly changed circumstances; a new father searches for a sign of the man he used to be; a daughter yearns for a lost childhood; and a mother reaches out in bewilderment to a child she can't fully understand. Accidental connections and overlapping relationships build a complex family all are linked by the elemental impact of children on adult lives. This profound evocation of family and its magnetic bonds reveals the mysterious forces that separate us from those we love and bind us to what we no longer understand. The Lucky Ones will stop you cold with its startling precision and power. Demonstrating a rare gift for illuminating "the bustling concourses of life" without sacrificing emotional depth or complexity, this rare and stunning novel confirms Rachel Cusk's place among our most incisive writers.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
12 people are currently reading
1048 people want to read
About the author
Rachel Cusk
53 books5,273 followersRachel Cusk was born in Canada, and spent some of her childhood in Los Angeles, before her family returned to England, in 1974, when Cusk was 8 years old. She read English at New College, Oxford.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
September 22, 2018
I feel a bit slapped around by this novel, published in 2003, the year after Cusk's bombshell of a memoir about motherhood, A Life’s Work, had such a mixed reception. Not only do her chapters read as individual, difficult-to-reconcile stories, the sentiment is painful to read. She is not funny: if one laughs, she remarked in an interview, the power is lost. Women and men living together in anything but married bliss: it’s instructive, relatable, hardly comforting.
The angles from which Cusk approaches these stories are not immediately clarifying. I wondered why we were reading about couples or their friends. The view of an older mother whose daughter is living a life outside of the mother’s experience seemed false for much of the chapter, as though she did not capture the older woman’s essence and mechanism: that which makes her tick. Eventually we see something, but we do not feel warm to this armored woman, battling her demons.
Who says a novel has to unroll its delights promiscuously for anyone to partake? The novel is a serious attempt to take on issues of critical meaning to people involved in relationships, perhaps even same-sex relationships, because the dynamic is often the same. After all, most people are still buying a “pig in a poke” when they marry in the sense they often do not know well the person with whom they intend live, and in any case, the relationship changes with the addition of children to the equation.
Cusk of course captures the despair of married women everywhere trying to fit their personalities, skills, and unique abilities into what can feel like the straightjacket of marriage and childcare. But we must now, in this time of #MeToo, acknowledge the point of view of the husband who, no matter what kind of man he was taught to be, also finds himself aghast at the weight of responsibility suddenly thrust upon him when he achieves his majority and marries.
But Cusk wrote this in the olden days: in something like fifteen years we are finally talking broadly, openly, and seriously about the rights of women in the workplace but also about the definition of masculinity, male privilege, and patriarchy. All this openness could be shut down tomorrow, as many have predicted the backlash will come, but the very things that Cusk is talking about so clearly is exactly what we should be internalizing in order to emerge healthy.
Transitions between chapters can be clunky and uncomfortable in direction, but Cusk at her worst is still way ahead of most at their best. The first chapter is set in a women’s prison, and it had some startling overlap with Rachel Kushner’s Booker-shortlisted novel this year, The Mars Room, a story of inattentive public defenders and tragic consequences. The very next chapter dropped us in the middle of a winter ski vacation in Switzerland for young professionals just beginning to construct and/or deconstruct their lives.
She works her themes, the moment young women, old women, rich women, poor women, talented women, and educated women clearly see their social predicament. The male partners of these women are not as finely drawn. The character of Martin in “The Way You Do It” could almost be a precursor for her narrator occupying negative space in the Outline trilogy, though she’d not even conceived of the notion then. Victor, the husband of the red-haired Serena, dies of a wasting disease. Colin refuses to speak, having succumbed to an affair, and Mr. Daley complains impotently late in life that his wife had “stolen his soul.”
But Vanessa in “Matters of Life and Death” says her desire for self- expression was thwarted, not by her actual circumstances, but by her fear of what might be. This theme recurs in later novels—a painter cannot paint nor a writer write for the distraction of everyday. The “enemy was not her husband; it was the capacity in herself, of which she was aware, for finding her husband unsatisfactory.”
Also recurring in other novels is Cusk’s tendency to have someone look upon the physical characteristics of a house as proof of something in the character of its inhabitants. She may be pointing to a common tendency in many of us to judge people by the splendor—or not—of their homes. Unfortunately, one cannot simply buy a life, only a lifestyle.
There is a party in this novel, which by now should strike readers with dread at what is to come. Suffice it to say, a great deal of blood is spilled and the circumstances are unclear: there had been an argument shortly before. The outcome is as unsettling as the months preceding the event.
Even in the novels that received less attention and critical praise, Cusk is working hard at expression. One I particularly liked was
The angles from which Cusk approaches these stories are not immediately clarifying. I wondered why we were reading about couples or their friends. The view of an older mother whose daughter is living a life outside of the mother’s experience seemed false for much of the chapter, as though she did not capture the older woman’s essence and mechanism: that which makes her tick. Eventually we see something, but we do not feel warm to this armored woman, battling her demons.
Who says a novel has to unroll its delights promiscuously for anyone to partake? The novel is a serious attempt to take on issues of critical meaning to people involved in relationships, perhaps even same-sex relationships, because the dynamic is often the same. After all, most people are still buying a “pig in a poke” when they marry in the sense they often do not know well the person with whom they intend live, and in any case, the relationship changes with the addition of children to the equation.
Cusk of course captures the despair of married women everywhere trying to fit their personalities, skills, and unique abilities into what can feel like the straightjacket of marriage and childcare. But we must now, in this time of #MeToo, acknowledge the point of view of the husband who, no matter what kind of man he was taught to be, also finds himself aghast at the weight of responsibility suddenly thrust upon him when he achieves his majority and marries.
But Cusk wrote this in the olden days: in something like fifteen years we are finally talking broadly, openly, and seriously about the rights of women in the workplace but also about the definition of masculinity, male privilege, and patriarchy. All this openness could be shut down tomorrow, as many have predicted the backlash will come, but the very things that Cusk is talking about so clearly is exactly what we should be internalizing in order to emerge healthy.
Transitions between chapters can be clunky and uncomfortable in direction, but Cusk at her worst is still way ahead of most at their best. The first chapter is set in a women’s prison, and it had some startling overlap with Rachel Kushner’s Booker-shortlisted novel this year, The Mars Room, a story of inattentive public defenders and tragic consequences. The very next chapter dropped us in the middle of a winter ski vacation in Switzerland for young professionals just beginning to construct and/or deconstruct their lives.
She works her themes, the moment young women, old women, rich women, poor women, talented women, and educated women clearly see their social predicament. The male partners of these women are not as finely drawn. The character of Martin in “The Way You Do It” could almost be a precursor for her narrator occupying negative space in the Outline trilogy, though she’d not even conceived of the notion then. Victor, the husband of the red-haired Serena, dies of a wasting disease. Colin refuses to speak, having succumbed to an affair, and Mr. Daley complains impotently late in life that his wife had “stolen his soul.”
But Vanessa in “Matters of Life and Death” says her desire for self- expression was thwarted, not by her actual circumstances, but by her fear of what might be. This theme recurs in later novels—a painter cannot paint nor a writer write for the distraction of everyday. The “enemy was not her husband; it was the capacity in herself, of which she was aware, for finding her husband unsatisfactory.”
Also recurring in other novels is Cusk’s tendency to have someone look upon the physical characteristics of a house as proof of something in the character of its inhabitants. She may be pointing to a common tendency in many of us to judge people by the splendor—or not—of their homes. Unfortunately, one cannot simply buy a life, only a lifestyle.
There is a party in this novel, which by now should strike readers with dread at what is to come. Suffice it to say, a great deal of blood is spilled and the circumstances are unclear: there had been an argument shortly before. The outcome is as unsettling as the months preceding the event.
Even in the novels that received less attention and critical praise, Cusk is working hard at expression. One I particularly liked was
“Colin digested Vanessa’s remark with the expression of a dog realising that what he had thought was a stick was in fact a bone.”Cusk moves on to revisit and refine these themes in her later work but we can see these in-between books are critical parts of her oeuvre, the building blocks for what is to come.
October 5, 2019
With this one, I can now claim to have read all of Cusk's novels so far, and this is one of the more distinctive ones.
This is another book that straddles the line between novel and linked short story collection - the five parts could all be read as self contained stories, and the last two could be seen as novellas. All except the middle part are narrated in the third person. The links include characters that appear in two or three of the stories and all are larfely about parenthood.
The dramatic first part, a heavily pregnant female prisoner, unjustly convicted of starting a fire in which two people died, approaches the child's birth. This protagonist from a deprived estate is very atypical of Cusk's subjects, and in the rest of the book she reverts to writing about the middle classes.
The second part follows a new father on a skiing trip without his wife, in the company of two couples and a single woman - this part is short and elliptical and is mostly about the man's state of mind.
The third part is narrated by the sister of one of the skiers, as she recalls her childhood and a failing relationship with a man who has a child from a one night stand.
The fourth centres on an older woman, whose daughter, another of the skiers, has just had her first child. She contrasts her conventional marriage and expectations with her daughter, who brings the child to stay with her in her village.
This village is also the setting of the final part, in which a younger housewife struggles to maintain hope and dignity. This is both the longest story and the one with most links to the others.
As always the writing is a pleasure to read, and Cusk's perspectives are always interesting.
This is another book that straddles the line between novel and linked short story collection - the five parts could all be read as self contained stories, and the last two could be seen as novellas. All except the middle part are narrated in the third person. The links include characters that appear in two or three of the stories and all are larfely about parenthood.
The dramatic first part, a heavily pregnant female prisoner, unjustly convicted of starting a fire in which two people died, approaches the child's birth. This protagonist from a deprived estate is very atypical of Cusk's subjects, and in the rest of the book she reverts to writing about the middle classes.
The second part follows a new father on a skiing trip without his wife, in the company of two couples and a single woman - this part is short and elliptical and is mostly about the man's state of mind.
The third part is narrated by the sister of one of the skiers, as she recalls her childhood and a failing relationship with a man who has a child from a one night stand.
The fourth centres on an older woman, whose daughter, another of the skiers, has just had her first child. She contrasts her conventional marriage and expectations with her daughter, who brings the child to stay with her in her village.
This village is also the setting of the final part, in which a younger housewife struggles to maintain hope and dignity. This is both the longest story and the one with most links to the others.
As always the writing is a pleasure to read, and Cusk's perspectives are always interesting.
December 6, 2025
The Lucky Ones pretends it is a collection of separate stories only to reveal, with the subtlety of a cat knocking a glass off the table, that everyone in it is tangled in everyone else's business. Life here is basically a series of everyday catastrophes.
We start with Kirsty, a very pregnant woman who spends her days trying to pee without toppling over and her nights remembering the small detail that she might be blamed for a house fire. Her life is a carnival of bad decisions, complicated loyalties, and the quiet hope that the universe might accidentally go easy on her for once. Spoiler free version: it does not.
Then there is Michelle, who helps Kirsty survive nightly bathroom expeditions. She is the human version of a seatbelt: sturdy, necessary, and never appreciated until something goes wrong.
We move on to Martin, a brand new father who is discovering that parenthood is basically being haunted by a tiny creature who screams. His idea of bonding time involves skiing at speeds that suggest a death wish. He loves his wife Dominique, but her exhaustion and despair are so thick they could be bottled and sold as a household cleaner.
Thomas, his friend, pretends he has everything under control while his girlfriend Josephine shimmers around him like a walking reminder that adulthood is just improvisation with higher stakes.
Then comes the narrator in The Sacrifices, who returns to her childhood home like someone revisiting the site of an old crime. Her past is a carefully curated museum of emotional confusion, parental silence, and handmade crafts produced under maternal supervision that borders on the militaristic. She remembers her childhood landscape with poetic reverence, but the truth is that nothing happens there except wind, boredom, and the slow psychological fermentation that produces adults who write novels.
We get Lucy, the sister, who is obsessed with a famous columnist, Serena Porter. Serena writes about family life as if domestic chaos were somehow glamorous, which is impressive because her actual life is the literary equivalent of a sink overflowing with dishes. Within Lucy's emotional diet Serena is a prophet.
Serena herself eventually appears, wrapped in public success and private misery. Her husband Victor is quietly dying while she turns their life into a newspaper column. Vanessa, their neighbor, watches from the sidelines, fascinated and horrified, rubbernecking a spiritual car crash.
The characters we thought were scattered are actually part of the same loose constellation. They drift in and out of each other's stories. So what is the plot? Life. People collide. People misunderstand each other. People try desperately to get what they want using tools they do not know how to hold. The lucky ones are not the lucky ones at all, but they keep trying, because what else are they supposed to do.
The book plays a quiet game of emotional billiards. Every chapter nudges another, sometimes gently, sometimes with the force of a human complication traveling at high speed. The surface looks calm, but the structure underneath is doing gymnastics.
Cusk handles daily life with astute attention, noticing the way a small disappointment or a half finished conversation can warp everything around it. The tone stays cool, but the emotional temperature keeps rising in the corners. It rewards a reader who listens closely instead of waiting for dramatic fireworks.
People live side by side without ever fully seeing each other. Choices that feel small at the time end up shaping whole stretches of a life. Memory is unreliable, perspective is skewed, and the connection is fragile, misunderstandings grow like ivy, and luck is just a name for whatever we fail to control.
Characters drift through each other's worlds without realizing how tightly linked they are. Those overlaps expose how much of life runs on coincidence, timing, and unspoken emotional weather. The novel captures how people try to navigate all that with limited tools, shaky instincts, and a deep desire not to fall apart in public.
We start with Kirsty, a very pregnant woman who spends her days trying to pee without toppling over and her nights remembering the small detail that she might be blamed for a house fire. Her life is a carnival of bad decisions, complicated loyalties, and the quiet hope that the universe might accidentally go easy on her for once. Spoiler free version: it does not.
Then there is Michelle, who helps Kirsty survive nightly bathroom expeditions. She is the human version of a seatbelt: sturdy, necessary, and never appreciated until something goes wrong.
We move on to Martin, a brand new father who is discovering that parenthood is basically being haunted by a tiny creature who screams. His idea of bonding time involves skiing at speeds that suggest a death wish. He loves his wife Dominique, but her exhaustion and despair are so thick they could be bottled and sold as a household cleaner.
Thomas, his friend, pretends he has everything under control while his girlfriend Josephine shimmers around him like a walking reminder that adulthood is just improvisation with higher stakes.
Then comes the narrator in The Sacrifices, who returns to her childhood home like someone revisiting the site of an old crime. Her past is a carefully curated museum of emotional confusion, parental silence, and handmade crafts produced under maternal supervision that borders on the militaristic. She remembers her childhood landscape with poetic reverence, but the truth is that nothing happens there except wind, boredom, and the slow psychological fermentation that produces adults who write novels.
We get Lucy, the sister, who is obsessed with a famous columnist, Serena Porter. Serena writes about family life as if domestic chaos were somehow glamorous, which is impressive because her actual life is the literary equivalent of a sink overflowing with dishes. Within Lucy's emotional diet Serena is a prophet.
Serena herself eventually appears, wrapped in public success and private misery. Her husband Victor is quietly dying while she turns their life into a newspaper column. Vanessa, their neighbor, watches from the sidelines, fascinated and horrified, rubbernecking a spiritual car crash.
The characters we thought were scattered are actually part of the same loose constellation. They drift in and out of each other's stories. So what is the plot? Life. People collide. People misunderstand each other. People try desperately to get what they want using tools they do not know how to hold. The lucky ones are not the lucky ones at all, but they keep trying, because what else are they supposed to do.
The book plays a quiet game of emotional billiards. Every chapter nudges another, sometimes gently, sometimes with the force of a human complication traveling at high speed. The surface looks calm, but the structure underneath is doing gymnastics.
Cusk handles daily life with astute attention, noticing the way a small disappointment or a half finished conversation can warp everything around it. The tone stays cool, but the emotional temperature keeps rising in the corners. It rewards a reader who listens closely instead of waiting for dramatic fireworks.
People live side by side without ever fully seeing each other. Choices that feel small at the time end up shaping whole stretches of a life. Memory is unreliable, perspective is skewed, and the connection is fragile, misunderstandings grow like ivy, and luck is just a name for whatever we fail to control.
Characters drift through each other's worlds without realizing how tightly linked they are. Those overlaps expose how much of life runs on coincidence, timing, and unspoken emotional weather. The novel captures how people try to navigate all that with limited tools, shaky instincts, and a deep desire not to fall apart in public.
February 6, 2017
Rachel Cusk elabora en Mucha suerte una obra intrincada y exigente, compuesta por cinco relatos cuyos personajes están de un modo u otro conectados entre sí, que versa sobre feminismo, maternidad y matrimonio con un nivel de precisión y espíritu analítico sencillamente abrumadores. Los personajes de la novela son, por lo general, mujeres que no se encuentran cómodas en sus papeles asignados por la sociedad, mujeres aplastadas que se rebelan contra la tiranía de los vínculos sanguíneos y que se enfrentan al truncamiento de sus expectativas con resignación, sabiéndose desamparadas por los hombres de su entorno. No es una novela especialmente dinámica: al contrario, abundan en ella largas introspecciones que tienen como objetivo explorar la psicología de cada personaje. Sin embargo, la prosa de Cusk, minuciosa, elaborada, certera y afilada como un dardo, hace que te deleites en la pausada cadencia del texto y en la progresiva revelación de sus circuitos internos. Cusk me ha demostrado en solo dos novelas ser una narradora excelente, una observadora audaz que comprende como nadie los mecanismos por los que se rigen las relaciones humanas y, en definitiva, una voz injustamente desoída que se merece todos los halagos posibles. Ya estáis tardando en leerla.
Read
March 3, 2013These short stories are lovely, but I have a bone to pick. This is not a novel. Just because a group of short stories happen to share some characters you cannot just call them a novel. Novels have an overarching plot - a narrative. A theme and a thematic structure. STOP CALLING SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS NOVELS. Goddamn it.
June 1, 2020
A wonderful book, one that calls to be re-read. This is an exploration of motherhood and of families. The linking stories are sometimes uncomfortable, confronting in their reality. It's possible to recognise in this novel the world around us. These are our neighbours, friends and relatives. Maybe even ourselves.
Rachel Cusk uses a style of narrative in which she gives perspectives on individuals and groups their own sections in her books and leaving the reader to find the connections. Each is a link in a chain. She's gone on to use the style in Arlington Park and in Outline.
The theme here is also a familiar one. Most of the books I've read by Cusk in some way focus on women in particular and their relationships more generally. She is an insightful author whose characters possess great depth.
Cusk's writing is beautiful and to the point. Her descriptions, her prose and her style all complement her story. She says no more or less than is needed.
The edition I read was narrated by Judith Boyd whose performance is magnificent. Cusk's writing is well suited to audio format and Boyd is completely in tune with every character. An ideal pairing.
Rachel Cusk uses a style of narrative in which she gives perspectives on individuals and groups their own sections in her books and leaving the reader to find the connections. Each is a link in a chain. She's gone on to use the style in Arlington Park and in Outline.
The theme here is also a familiar one. Most of the books I've read by Cusk in some way focus on women in particular and their relationships more generally. She is an insightful author whose characters possess great depth.
Cusk's writing is beautiful and to the point. Her descriptions, her prose and her style all complement her story. She says no more or less than is needed.
The edition I read was narrated by Judith Boyd whose performance is magnificent. Cusk's writing is well suited to audio format and Boyd is completely in tune with every character. An ideal pairing.
April 7, 2023
I can think of no contemporary writer who does such a convincing, deep job of getting into her characters' minds. The result is fiction about day-to-day life that is more suspenseful than any murder mystery. I simply did not know what these characters might do next, but drama and misbehavior were constant threats to the status quo. Mrs. Daley's portrayal . . . An ordinary woman, or apparently so, and her incredibly constant (and toxic) drama. With family members like her, who needs murderers? And I will say that in my experience her characterization is not at all far-fetched (though seen from the outside rather than in the immediate proximity Cusk writes). In life, we get the emanations, the sense the threat . . . but fortunately are not privy to the actual thoughts of a borderline personality, narcissistic family member. And threaded all through, Cusk's brilliant, lovely descriptions of places, and the genuine love that some people feel for their children and others and life itself.
June 3, 2017
Cusk is a writer's writer. These linked stories revolve around recurring characters, but the connections are often hard to keep straight. If I weren't in the middle of so many books, I would have read twice. And think I will reread some day. The main theme is motherhood, and the connection between mothers and their children. Also, what constitutes luck. How do we measure it? How do we recognize it, not only in others' lives but in our own. The writing is wonderful, but I did find there was a good deal of work involved in figuring out and maintaining the connections. I have two more books by Rachel Cusk to read. I'm fascinated by her fiction and her book reviews. I also plan to read a memoir about her own becoming a mother. This is definitely her obsession.
June 6, 2018
This book is billed as a novel but it's actually five separate stories, linked nebulously by two or three characters. There’s a passage in it spoken by one of the characters who appear consistently (albeit often briefly) in each of the stories. This is Serena, a young woman ostensibly successfully combining career (journalism) and motherhood. She writes a regular column for a national newspaper based on her own family experiences and those of other women she knows. She says, when asked what it is she does - “I’m trying to write about feminism in the context of the family. About how inequality runs through the veins of how we live together and love and reproduce.”
This appears to be Cusk’s overarching theme – the conflicts, struggles and violent contradictions inherent in being a parent and a spouse. Interestingly this book was written a year after her controversial autobiographical account of her own experiences of parenting –
‘’A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother”. Neither book presents a particularly optimistic view of motherhood.
In this book there is no character who’s found a way of rationalising their hopes, dreams and aspirations as individuals with the responsibilities and obligations that come with marriage and children. They’re all struggling in various ways, but then if they weren’t there wouldn’t be a basis for a book. Cover to cover versions of happy families might be too saccharine, as well as unrealistic. And Cusk is not an author to embrace anything but gritty realism overlaid with a consistent bleakness that in her skilled hands seems somehow just the way it should be.
It’s the prose and the spare but authentic dialogue that makes the reading of this book far more rewarding than its subject suggests.
This appears to be Cusk’s overarching theme – the conflicts, struggles and violent contradictions inherent in being a parent and a spouse. Interestingly this book was written a year after her controversial autobiographical account of her own experiences of parenting –
‘’A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother”. Neither book presents a particularly optimistic view of motherhood.
In this book there is no character who’s found a way of rationalising their hopes, dreams and aspirations as individuals with the responsibilities and obligations that come with marriage and children. They’re all struggling in various ways, but then if they weren’t there wouldn’t be a basis for a book. Cover to cover versions of happy families might be too saccharine, as well as unrealistic. And Cusk is not an author to embrace anything but gritty realism overlaid with a consistent bleakness that in her skilled hands seems somehow just the way it should be.
It’s the prose and the spare but authentic dialogue that makes the reading of this book far more rewarding than its subject suggests.
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December 16, 2021This book is centered on The Sacrifices, the only chapter where the narrator goes unnamed. I read it a second time for that character in particular, certain I had missed mention of her name somewhere. I hadn't missed it. She is referred to only as a sister, and perhaps without a name could be any woman I know.
The structure of the book is something I experienced as a novel, and although it looks like a collection of short stories (to many on here, and to their great annoyance), the events unfold through different connections - loose connections, like those that connect the five stories, working with deeper shifts the babies cause in their caretaker's lives - toward a surprising resolution. Collections of short stories I have read don't do this.
But this is what happens when I read her books, my work as a reader becomes almost painfully conscious. And these stories are answering questions I've had for years now: how does a woman know she wants to have a child? How does she reconcile the hidden and public sides of motherhood? What happens when she shouldn't have had a child and how is that question ever unearthed? Presumably, the lucky ones get what they want. But people generally don't know what they want or why, and if they get what they want, are so easily undone by it. The structure of the novel and the vivid characters were a beautiful way approach such painful questions.
The structure of the book is something I experienced as a novel, and although it looks like a collection of short stories (to many on here, and to their great annoyance), the events unfold through different connections - loose connections, like those that connect the five stories, working with deeper shifts the babies cause in their caretaker's lives - toward a surprising resolution. Collections of short stories I have read don't do this.
But this is what happens when I read her books, my work as a reader becomes almost painfully conscious. And these stories are answering questions I've had for years now: how does a woman know she wants to have a child? How does she reconcile the hidden and public sides of motherhood? What happens when she shouldn't have had a child and how is that question ever unearthed? Presumably, the lucky ones get what they want. But people generally don't know what they want or why, and if they get what they want, are so easily undone by it. The structure of the novel and the vivid characters were a beautiful way approach such painful questions.
September 8, 2016
It was the July selection of my library reading group and I have to say it didn't capture my interest at all. Some of the prose was beautiful but often it choked itself on wordiness leaving the impression the writer had swallowed a dictionary or was showing off. I just didn't care about the characters or the minute details of their thoughts and lives. I playfully longed for something dramatic to happen; saying to my husband at one point I wish she'd just murder her husband rather than whining about his personal habits and dress sense. However, I guess the story was more 'true-to-life' than most I'd chose to read.
Collectively the reading group agreed that while it was a book that was well reviewed (cited by reviewers as similar in style to Virginia Woolf) that it wasn't particularly readable. Received a 'generous' 2/10 from the group.
March 10, 2017
So every once in a while you have to find a dud. That's what this "novel" was for me. It seems to me a set of sketches barely connected with little overall theme.
That said, there are some good sections. The first sketch, "Confinement," captures the fear and sense of abandonment of being pregnant and imprisoned for unjust reasons, trying to survive through uncertain ties to other jailed women. The second, "The Way You Do It," probes six discordant personalities on a Swiss skiing holiday, interacting erratically with each other in ways that keep you engaged. But after that, other sketches follow that seem so loosely linked with these beginnings to leave you bewildered. Plus, the writing, capable in the early going, seems to decline.
I did stick it through to the bitter end, hoping that somehow a coherent shape would emerge. But at least for me that didn't happen.
That said, there are some good sections. The first sketch, "Confinement," captures the fear and sense of abandonment of being pregnant and imprisoned for unjust reasons, trying to survive through uncertain ties to other jailed women. The second, "The Way You Do It," probes six discordant personalities on a Swiss skiing holiday, interacting erratically with each other in ways that keep you engaged. But after that, other sketches follow that seem so loosely linked with these beginnings to leave you bewildered. Plus, the writing, capable in the early going, seems to decline.
I did stick it through to the bitter end, hoping that somehow a coherent shape would emerge. But at least for me that didn't happen.
December 22, 2021
So far, everything i have read by Rachel Cusk has been satisfying; perhaps in the main due to the fact that i feel she is one of the few modern writers i actually am convinced by, that seems to be writing the books that i want to read (and write).
This is not so much a novel as a short collection of longer short stories, the first two are decent enough, the third begins to really interest, but it is the last two that stand out, to the point where i finished the book disappointed that these two were not the beginning of a complete novel about this isolated country environment.
Cusk is an excellent writer, poignant and observant, amusing and poetic; really, people should be much more aware of her work.
This is not so much a novel as a short collection of longer short stories, the first two are decent enough, the third begins to really interest, but it is the last two that stand out, to the point where i finished the book disappointed that these two were not the beginning of a complete novel about this isolated country environment.
Cusk is an excellent writer, poignant and observant, amusing and poetic; really, people should be much more aware of her work.
December 30, 2019
This book of connected short stories is my first experience with Cusk. I will definitely read her novels as I liked her style. Each story offered a different glimpse of Cusk's creative abilities. The first story in the collection was my favourite. It is a 5-star story, to me. There were a couple of 4-star stories and a couple of 2-star and 3-star stories so I am having a tough time with my overall rating. Probably 3.5-stars. How non-committal is that??
Possibility of more detailed review to come.
Possibility of more detailed review to come.
October 11, 2011
I gave this book two stars mostly because I didn't connect to the story. She's a wonderfully stark and observant writer, who packs a punch with her short stories. The book is a series of short stories that are connected by a "six-degrees-of-separation" theme. Woven through the stories are themes of motherhood/paretning or women wrestling with a should I/shouldn't I have a family question. At 228 pages, it's a fairly fast read, but not necessarily light and breezy.
January 31, 2013
The woman can write, no doubt about it. Her subject matter and absolute honesty in approaching it may make the mothers among us squirm a bit. I am curious to know if other readers are reminded of Iris Murdoch's writing, although I'd say that Cusk is much less self-conscious and precious in her task. As well-written as it is, I'm not sure that it improved MY human condition in its reading, and perhaps that's not an entirely fair test of its worthiness.
July 10, 2016
I didn’t get this. What I saw here was 5 loosely interconnected stories about some very unhappy people. I didn’t see the “luck” anywhere. I’m kind of sorry I read this, for it was rather depressing and I don’t think it said anything good about children at all. I’m glad it was short so I didn’t waste more than a day on it.
February 16, 2009
This book was like a book in the round. The first characters you meet in the first chapter disappear and then you find them in the last. It's a six degrees of seperation kind of book set in Suburban London. I enjoyed it.
January 5, 2010
I placed The Lucky Ones on my "short stories" shelf because, to me, the five short chapters that comprise this book certainly read more like loosely related short stories than a cohesive novel.
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July 11, 2011"The thought of his daughter filled him with spurts of nervous warmth, and with the alarm of someone who has dropped a plate and is watching it in the the last seconds of its wholeness, before it hits the floor."
Rachel Cusk, The Lucky Ones (London: Harper Perennial, 2003), 39.
Rachel Cusk, The Lucky Ones (London: Harper Perennial, 2003), 39.
April 23, 2009
Short stories about reproduction/motherhood adn family dynamics. Sad but well written I did not finish it as I was not really in the mood for these stories.
August 1, 2010
Now, I really enjoyed Arlington Park, so had high hopes for The Lucky Ones. Unfortunately Cusk's earlier novel did not elicit the same response. Despite having a different subject matter, the layout was a bit too similar to AP, yet not as enjoyable a read. Whilst Arlington Park had subtle touches of humour, The Lucky Ones was just a bit too dreary and the characters aren't particularly believable or likeable.
That isn't to say it isn't well written, because I want to make it clear that it is. Cusk has a natural talent for really grasping emotions and atmospheres through the power of words, but that didn't seem enough to keep the book flowing. The chapters were meant to interweave, with the constant of lawyer Victor Porter and his journalist wife Serena running through it, but if anything, it seemed to be just a collection of five short stories. It was very sporadic, there didn't seem to be any links between the characters, despite being led to believe that there were. And the importance of Victor and Serena just wasn't made clear enough. I guess the chapters link thematically more than anything. The disappointment and confusions in relationships, particularly parent and child.
If The Lucky Ones had been marketed as a collection of short stories, then perhaps it would have worked better. (Not that it didn't work; the author was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists', in the same year as The Lucky Ones was released).
As a full novel however, it wasn't for me.
That isn't to say it isn't well written, because I want to make it clear that it is. Cusk has a natural talent for really grasping emotions and atmospheres through the power of words, but that didn't seem enough to keep the book flowing. The chapters were meant to interweave, with the constant of lawyer Victor Porter and his journalist wife Serena running through it, but if anything, it seemed to be just a collection of five short stories. It was very sporadic, there didn't seem to be any links between the characters, despite being led to believe that there were. And the importance of Victor and Serena just wasn't made clear enough. I guess the chapters link thematically more than anything. The disappointment and confusions in relationships, particularly parent and child.
If The Lucky Ones had been marketed as a collection of short stories, then perhaps it would have worked better. (Not that it didn't work; the author was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists', in the same year as The Lucky Ones was released).
As a full novel however, it wasn't for me.
January 11, 2008
This book was pure crap. There was no plot line and it jumped from one character to another. !!!!Don't read this part of you want to read this part because it contains many spoliers!!!! The first character was a pregnant woman who was in jail and it ends with her having the baby in a cop car by herself, then it jumps to a new father who doesn' know if he's making the right decision or not and ends with him skiing down a hill. Then in the middle of the book it changes from third person to frst person and then stays third for the rest of the book. From then on it gets weirder and the only thing that links them together is this guy named Victor Porter, who dies in the end, and in the last chapter its mentioned that the woman in the first story's daughter is two. Where did the two years go? My personal opinion: The cover is decieving. Don't read the book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 27, 2012
I read this book for the first time in the summer of 2004, and decided to re-visit it four years later. It hadn’t made a memorable impression on me from that summer, but I did recall liking it. This time around, I was shocked by how little I had remembered about it, so unfortunately, though this set of four short stories that interlink together was interesting, it was rather forgettable. The links between the stories provided the most fascinating aspect of this rather hard to classify book as a whole. The book was certainly well written, though, but unfortunately not very relatable. When it ended, it just felt lacking... There was nothing really hatable about the book, but certainly nothing lovable either.
June 11, 2010
"Other skiers shot by him, their bodies straight and graceful, swaying from side to side with the precision of metronomes and then vanishing in a spray of powder" (40).
"Now that the baby had come his life would be lived aginst a mounting force of limitation" (56).
“Samantha bore a curious resemblance not only to her son but also to Robert himself. They were made in the same style. They were like a set of vases, or a series of paintings by a particular artist” (78).
“ ‘I remember, when the twins were born, looking at them and having this amazing moment of realization—that these two tiny people were more important than I was’” (87).
"Perhaps she should have, she didn't know: honesty had a certain appeal; it changed things, but not necessarily for the better" (171).
"Now that the baby had come his life would be lived aginst a mounting force of limitation" (56).
“Samantha bore a curious resemblance not only to her son but also to Robert himself. They were made in the same style. They were like a set of vases, or a series of paintings by a particular artist” (78).
“ ‘I remember, when the twins were born, looking at them and having this amazing moment of realization—that these two tiny people were more important than I was’” (87).
"Perhaps she should have, she didn't know: honesty had a certain appeal; it changed things, but not necessarily for the better" (171).
March 1, 2012
This book was about a girl who was pregnant in jail for something that she didn't even do. She suffered many months of pain with barley in help and she basically gave up because her lawyer that was supposed to get her out didn't. He was sick for a few weeks and gave the case to his other lawyer to do it for him but she messed up the whole thing. Leaving the girl named Kristy to serve 10 years in prison while her child is growing up away from her mother. Throughout the novel the chapters where stories that were all connected in some sort of way. It was a bit confusing in the way of the connections so i would give this novel 2 stars.
December 30, 2007
i enjoyed reading this book, which is a novel, although it often feels like a collection of short stories. it's a light read and the story/ies mostly deal with women, families, family life and children, etc. it was a neat read because it stimulated a lot of thought about "traditional" and "modern" senses of the way people should/do relate to each other within and outside of family structures.
April 10, 2008
I learned of this book via Cookie magazine. It's an excellent and fascinating description of multiple mothering perspectives - influenced by age & social class. I found the initial chapter to be very compelling, but the last chapter to be a bit weak. Regardless, like The Corrections, some of her prose perfectly encapsulates the emotional experiences of motherhood.
October 9, 2009
A steely, truth-telling collection of linked short stories (it's absurd that the publisher tried to pass this off as a novel). Cusk's descriptions of domesticity are piercing and clean. She never stoops to sentiment as she observes the lives of fulltime mothers. Rather, her stories acknowledge the violence and terror of everyday existence.
March 21, 2012
Very good, she writes very well about the inner thought processes of people and this collection of short stories (but with inter-connected characters) was striking. Although... everyone is sad, or disappointed, or not in love with their spouse, or struggling with parenthood and at times I yearned for at least one character to be happy and fulfilled.
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