Rating: 
Summary: Beyond the brink of porn and just third class fiction
Review: Explicit language in literature does not offend me. However, I want this kind of language to be useful in the context of a story. I don't see the usefulness here. So to me Susanna Moore's novel is more porn than literature. The lack of usefulness applies to the bloody ending of the novel, too. Besides, this ending could not have been logically more impossible: A total failure as far as point of view is concerned. Maybe I'm expecting too much of entertaining fiction, but the book was a waste of time, and yes, even a nuisance for me.
Rating: 
Summary: A Tale of Obsession and Depravity
Review: IN THE CUT is a tale of obsession and depravity and the mood is somber throughout a fast-paced story. The book is well-written but it left me feeling mildly depressed.
Rating:
Summary: Violent porn
Review: The only thing worse than violent porn (and by porn I mean gratuitousness for its own sake) is a talented, established writer trying to write down to her audience in what she clearly perceives to be a marginal genre. I'm basing this response on my memory of my experience reading it as opposed to the book itself, which I successfully managed to forget almost as soon as I threw it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Authentically Erotic and Brilliant!
Review: In The Cut is truly a shocking novel. Shocking in that it has redeemed the "erotic thriller", rescuing this genere from its' Danielle Steel infested depths. This is a serious erotic novel written by an intelligent adult for other intelligent adults. It is certainly provocative, erotic (in the true sense of the word) and it's ending is authentically jarring. However it is honest and never seeks cheap thrills for the sake of shock value. One has the sense that Ms. Moore has taken personal risks with this novel, putting her personal fears and desires on public display and then having the courage to write an intelligent meditation on them. A truly remarkable novel. I hope that you are lucky enough to happen upon it as I did.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good, but limited by genre
Review: Susanna Moore's "In the Cut" is a gripping, chilling and disturbing erotic thriller. The protagonist, Frannie, is an English teacher fascinated by the language of the street. As the novel opens, she has, against her better judgment, gone to a bar with one of her students to help him on a paper topic. While looking for the bathroom, Frannie witnesses a lewd act between a redheaded woman and a man with a visible tattoo. The next day, a cop shows up at Frannie's upscale Greenwich Village apartment, and tells her that a woman was killed the previous night after leaving the same bar Frannie was at with her student. Soon, Frannie is involved in a disturbing affair with the cop,and by extension the search for a serial killer. Frannie's background is only alluded to, but her upscale lifestyle in Greenwich Village, as well as her voyaristic fascination with the working class, made her an only somewhat sympathetic heroine. We sense she has an intellectual pretension, and feels superior to her cop lover and to her inner city students. There are hints that this is an exploration of social values, and parts of this exploration make excellent, thought-provoking fiction. But, unfortunately, the book takes a turn in the final act and focuses entirely on the silly, by-the- numbers serial murder plot. The final page of this novel regains the hints of earlier brilliance, and it's almost enough--almost-- to save it from the dopey climax.
Rating:
Summary: Gritty realism and discordantly sick and sadistic ending
Review: This 1995 novel by Susanna Moore is going to be made into a film starring Nicole Kidman. Set in Greenwich Village, the protagonist is a writing teacher who becomes involved in a murder investigation because she has accidentally witnessed a sex act in a bar involving the victim. Written with gritty realism, the reader is drawn into the writing teacher's own graphically erotic sex scenes with a detective, as well as her fear of being stalked by an the unknown murderer. The plot twists and turns and seems to be a basic murder mystery. But then, the book ends suddenly in a sick and sadistic way. And the reader is shocked, not only because of the brutality of this conclusion, but because there was no real foreshadowing of this kind of development. I cringed when I read it. But I can't say it haunted me because it was just so discordantly out-of-context that I couldn't identify with it. For that reason I can't recommend this book. But even though I still get occasional negative chills recalling the book, I'm sure I'll want to see the movie.
Rating:
Summary: In A Word: Sickening!
Review: I don't think I've ever read a book that disturbed me more than Moore's. It's blatant Grand Guignol, blood and gore and sadism, peopled with characters devoid of humanity with whom it's not possible to empathize. I also feel it is totally anti-woman. The macho detectives' attitude toward women is sick-making, but the "heroine" just laps it up, panting to be abused over and over again. She's not the poster child for the woman's movement, that's for sure. The final scene is grotesque, sadistic, bloody, and just plain downright nasty. Nicole Kidman bought this property for a film? I wish her well with it---perhaps she can authorize a complete re-write and wash its mouth out with soap. P.S., it deserves no stars whatsoever.
Rating: 
Summary: Promising elements, disappointing follow-through
Review: Interesting characters, sexy premise, but underdeveloped, and, well, ultimately unsatisfying. I didn't need a "happy ending," but I felt . . . cheated. I expected something more complex and interesting at least. For something so bloody, it was awfully neat.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I really love Susanna Moore's other novels, The Whiteness of Bones, My Old Sweetheart, and Sleeping Beauties. However, this novel was really disturbing to me. I don't know why, maybe because I am used to reading thrillers with happier endings. Susanna Moore still writes well in this novel but I just didn't enjoy it as much as her other novels.
Rating:
Summary: A change of pace for Moore
Review: Susanna Moore, who usually writes introspective, slowly graceful novels about lost love and Hawaiian breezes, has outdone herself with a ripping thriller. New York has never seemed so insidiously dangerous. Moore captures her heroine's naively foolish carelessness with the perfect tone of the curious culture dweller. I hope the movie catches this "innocent in darkville" tone as well. Read Moore's other novels and you will see a finely honed literary talent without the tension of this novel. But never forget, Moore is amused by life, not least by the absurd casual violence that lurks along New York's nameless streets. Great novel with a haunting main character, shallow and clueless as a lamb among invisible wolves.
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