The Country Life

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful writing.....but
Review: I had to lop off one star in my assessment, despite my admiration for the author's exceptional talent. I was immediately captured by the style and the intriguing voice of Stella. It was clear that this was a character in the midst of some turmoil, since every minute event was examined tortuously (the anticipated arrival of Mr. Madden at the train station was a good tip-off that our Stella was not quite normal)and each mundane occurence (entering the food shop) became an act pregnant with possibilites. The hilarity of Stella's inability to do anything right soon gave way to expectation of the next debacle and after a while I became tired of the plot and wondered what had brought Stella to the Maddens in the first place. I had no doubt that a mental breakdown of some sort had taken place and 3/4 of the way through the book I was impatient to know her story. However, it was all wrapped up in the last few pages in a most unsatisfactory way, leaving me feeling a bit cheated. I read this book in a day: at first the lyrical writing held me in its thrall. Ultimately though, I grew tired of waiting for the denoument and wanted it to end. I look forward to reading this young author's next effort. Her exceptional talent can only age beautifully and if she can get that plot to move at a better pace, she has every chance of reaching literary nirvana.

Rating:
Summary: Give Stella a break
Review: I've been reading books about the beneficial effects of near death experiences, so when I read The Country Life, I saw the main character, Stella as a person fluttering on the brink of death. She was a woman with a death wish much stronger that her lust for the life given to her.

Not that she wanted to die completely. What she wanted was to die to an old self, a self defined by her parent's desire for upward social mobility. When, in the first chapter, she made the bold step of cutting off form them, as well as her parent-approved male partner, I knew I wanted to read her story.

If she could somehow die to the old self, maybe she could attain more than a brief taste of certain happiness. But to do so, she would need to mourn -- it is the mournful who finally are comforted. Instead of mourning, she flirts, she fantasizes, she says yes when she wants to say no. This reader mourns for her.

Rating:
Summary: The new Jane Austen...
Review: I, too, like the classical writers, as one rather pretentious reviewer indicated below, comparing some tried-and-true old frumps to the deliciously contemporary Rachel Cusk.

This is a novel with CHARM and WIT and experiential consciousness-raising about disabilities. It's a love story, really, between Stella and Martin, who learn so much from each other.

But I absolutely adored all the other characters - every single one: the self-absorbed Pamela, her equally spacey house-husband and country squire Piers, their narcissistic, gorgeous son, Toby and their petulant daughter Caroline. Not to mention the strange-looking and randy Mr. Trimmer.

What I particularly loved is that nothing ever turns out to be what Stella expects. Just when she thinks Martin's gossipy, bossy teacher is a lonely old-maid she finds out that the woman is actually a married swinger! Just when she thinks Pamela is snobbish, Pamela turns out to be broad-minded. Just when she thinks the old "creature" at the post-office is about to do her in, he/she/whatever heals Stella's sunburn and makes her happy again.

The characters are at once dysfunctional and adorable - like most people. It's the rare author who can convey this universal contradiction. Jane Austen did it and it was this compassion for the human condition that made her one of our greatest writers.

I just wish this book had gone on and on forever. I want sequels! I want a movie! I want a PBS adaptation! Thanks to the author for one of the more pleasant weeks of my life.

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent, light, good read
Review: One is initially tempted to suggest that the English landscape, having already suffered through various bovine and vegetable scourges, is now being decimated by a viral infection which causes gifted young novelists to write books which combine first person narratives by neurotic-but-intelligent heroines and plot points that take rather pointed (i.e., "pointed points" indeed) satiric nods at 18th and 19th Century literary plots.

Rachel Cusk's the Country Life, though, mines its sources with wit and style, and has the feel of a 30s farce, rather like A.A. Milne's comedies for adults. Ms. Cusk has a bit of fun with allusions to the varied novels of country retreat. Yet, the novel does not feel artificial at all, nor is it particularly smug.

The tone is very light, witty but not fall-down funny. There's a whiff of Jane Eyre here, and bit of Cold Comfort farm there, maybe a nod or two at Wilkie Collins over yonder, a set of characters who might populate John Mortimer or Muriel Spark novels, a good bit of the class pretension/class distinction motif, and more than a touch (indeed, a whole portion) of the urban dweller goes rural satire. But this book is not confined by its sources--Rachel Cusk is a *real* novelist, the kind who can take a light comic format and run with it.

The plot is straightforward. Urban twentysomething woman seemingly inexplicably leaves her job to take au pair job in rural setting for wealthy family with disabled son. Disaster ensues.

The thing that makes this a worthwhile read is that one has the sense that Ms. Cusk knows she has a few points to make, but is far too gifted to stop in the middle of this bit of cotton candy to belabor the reader with long-winded condescension to her characters or to the reader. We don't mind that we have visited this landscape a time or two before, because Ms. Cusk is such a talented tour guide we see new wrinkles in the dilemmae that our previous tour guides have overlooked.

A good read.

Rating:
Summary: An elegant novel that's full of poignance, wit and humour !
Review: Rachel Cusk has been shortlisted as one of England's new generation of great novelists. Writing in the tradition of Jane Austen, Cusk has the ability to transform a small range novel into a modern comedy of manners that will appeal to readers who love good old fashioned writing, a lost art it seems with many of today's contemporary novelists who confuse bad for inventive writing. She writes in long flowing sentences and the result is a very literate prose that flows with an easy elegance, making "A Country Life" a truly enchanting reading experience.

The ordeal that Stella Benson endures as an au pair to the Maddens is as much due to the eccentricity of her employers as to her own mixed up emotional state after hastily deciding to abandon city life for the country and severing all ties with her family. Her transformation in 24 hours from big time city solicitor to lowly hired help in the country is fraught with uncertainties for our Stella. Unprepared for the quaint habits and scorching sun of country life, Stella stumbles from one awkward situation to another but survives the humiliation with stoicism and good humour. Quite plainly, the Maddens inhabit a world of their own. They live in a different planet from city folks. Even the ground keeper and the creature-like shopkeeper behave strangely. Piers and Pamela and their grown up children are characters straight out of Evelyn Waugh's England. Pamela is falsely genteel and patronising in her treatment of Stella but since it is born of insularity and ignorance rather than rudeness or plain bad manners, she deserves our pity. Caroline and Toby are spoilt privileged types and rather unattractive characters. Only the physically handicapped Martin has the playful wickedness to make Stella confront some home truths about herself.

There are vague hints of deep dark family secrets, adulteries and even incest throughout but thankfully none of these prove to be fertile leads. To her credit, Cusk remains focussed, never losing sight of the point of her novel but at the risk of disappointing readers who expect something darker to develop. I like it as it is. "A Country Life" is something of a minor masterpiece that is delivered with an abundance of poignance, wit and humour. I'll be reading a lot more of Cusk in the future, that's for sure.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of Intelligent Fun
Review: The Country Life is a light, breezy novel for those in search of something a little different. We meet Stella Benson as she is about to take a new job, away from her native London. She narrates her story in an interesting way. We have virtually no background information on her, only what she chooses to tell us. We are kept guessing for a while about what her job is, what she is running from, why. Every 40 pages or so, she slips one of her secrets in, sometimes drawn out through conversation with the other characters. I really liked that technique. She talks to us as if we are her best friends, yet hides important things from us. Our perspective on her story is constantly shifting. You imagine her reasons are thus and so, yet they turn out not to be. Stella's navigation through her new life is quite amusing and entertaining. Stella tries to figure out what makes the people in her new world tick, just as we are trying to figure her out. It's a great, fun book, an entertaining read.

Rating:
Summary: An elegant novel that's full of poignance, wit and humour !
Review: This is a wonderful luxury of a book. Rachel Cusk is a rare talent. I liked "Saving Agnes" enough to read "The Temporary" the following year, and this second book was worth all the praise her first one got. "The Temporary" is a masterpiece! But where "The Country Life" is a comic masterpiece, "The Temporary" is dark, so be warned. It seems to me after reading both a drama and a comedy by this author that there is nothing she can't do. I have even read her non-fiction book on dealing with a pregnancy and a newborn. Now that is reader loyalty!! She is worth it.