Rating: 
Summary: Reluctant to give it one star, but I can't click on zero
Review: Such a boring, pointless story that only an antisocial might find appealing, with an ending that will probably leave you yawning. If you could care any less about the central character, you would be in a coma. Yes, Moore writes well, but so do countless writers who achieve more than she ever comes close to... Trust me, there are books that waste your time, and this one is at the top of the list. Move on.
Rating: 
Summary: tense, but leaves you cold
Review: Moral ambiguity is great but this is no Maltese Falcon. The mood is right, the writing is taut. But in the end you couldn't care less about what happens to the main character (whose level of detachment and egotism must set some kind of record for the genre.) Worst of all are the author's literary pretensions, quie laughable considering the weak character development. Sexy? Yes. Unfortunately it's as deep as a fishbowl, and as hollow as one.
Rating: 
Summary: Brillant!
Review: Read it twice and loved it. Besides being a classic whodunnit it gives a refreshing account of female sexuality and urban life.
Rating: 
Summary: a psycho-semiotic thriller - Help!
Review: A classic romance: Two individuals from different classes falls in love with eachother and have a hard time understanding eachother's language. A detective story: "Whodunit"? The story of attractive (needless to say, it always is...) women being murdered, down-town, Manhattan. - (as E.A.Poe once said: "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.") A female detective without the typical male detective omniscience and clairvoyance, because her most significant lack is her unability to see, that also includes an unability to read the signs right! And the female detective ends up as the victim. Her search for a female identity ends in the cirkel of death. Throughout the novel she wants to be like the men. Finally she becomes woman and die! Why is that? If the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic, the existential as well as aesthetic possibilities for women are significantly bad. There is not a room of women's own in neither life nor art...? Still?
Rating: 
Summary: Open your mind to submerge in the darkest NYC.
Review: Do not expect the usual black and white murder story with some added sex and violence!
Forget about political correctness and lose that happy end!
Set your mind free to enjoy this erotic, violent yet so captivating book. Dive into the world of Franny. Participate in her life as a passive opportunist and meet her students, her lovers and her feelings. Float with her through the deepest abysses of man. Admit the similarities to your own life, and learn about the darkest corners inside yourself.
Rating:
Summary: empty, pretentious, blatantly commercial
Review: Well, I did finish "In the Cut," but reluctantly, and only to find out what this much-vaunted "surprise ending" was. The story failed to engage my interest: the main character (what was her name again?) is a smug, would-be brilliant but hopelessly mediocre NYC single woman who pairs up with a big bad cop, delivered straight from Central Casting. One reasonably good sex scene does not a good thriller make. I found the ending neither sensational nor genre-bending; it struck me as a calculated, completely so-what solution to a not very interesting problem. Steer clear of this one. Read Sue Grafton instead.
Rating:
Summary: Feminist noir leaves an empty feeling
Review: While Moore has a flair for dark descriptions of NYC nightlife and the singles scene, it seems evident she has no interest in characterizing heterosexual relationships unless they involve males as ego-cruising masochists and women as depressed suicidals. Darkness in noir fiction is fine but here the characters are so segregated into stereotypical holes that I found myself wondering about the author's view of the real world rather than those of the characters. Still, it manages to intrigue, and the dialogue is crisply written. My biggest complaint, however, is the ending which, without giving it away, is unexpected and quite unfair when you consider the book was written in the first person. I felt cheated, that the author was laughing at her readers. Yes, rules may be made to be broken but readers still expect a modicum of fairness and the final page disregards that.
Rating:
Summary: steely and bleak
Review: Susanna Moore's "In The Cut" is a thriller but an oddly detached one. Perhaps that's because her protagonist, a divorced writing teacher living in New York, seems detached from her own feelings and her own past; she observes both in fragments as the story progresses, and we get to know her only through refracted moments of recollection. It's a clever device, to sprinkle biographical data throughout the narrative instead of loading it up front, but in the end, we don't quite get to know her. Her true passion is words. She's a writing teacher, but her calling is linguistics. What I liked about this book was that Moore created a character who had interests other than those simply created to move the plot along. Her character spends a lot of time in her head, appreciating the music of language, the creation of new word usages and the evolution of slang; it would be easy to dispense with her as someone who lives too much in abstractions to appreciate the carnivorous world she lives in, but Moore doesn't pigeonhole her quite so neatly. The appeal of the ambiguous, sometimes threatening quality of words is mirrored by a similar appreciation of the menacing possibilities of human contact. This, of course, leads her protagonist into nothing but icy, gruesome trouble. The other characters in the book are all needy, some of them venal, and none of them entirely reliable. Our protagonist passively allows an affair with a troubled detective to begin, a man whose temperament is only a shade more empathetic than Harvey Keitel's "Bad Lieutenant". However, as a dramatic foil he's just as opaque as she is, and the portrait left of him seems incomplete. But that's the way the whole book feels once you've finished it--as if there was more to be explained. Moore seems to be aspiring to the place Joyce Carol Oates occupies when it comes to conveying modern urban terror and personal disintigration; that's a pretty high standard, and she doesn't make it, but there is still some clever writing here. Most convincing are her observations of the nonverbal cues men and women give each other, and the way some people communicate when more is imputed than is ever said.
Rating:
Summary: In the realm of the senses
Review: Well-written and highly styled as this novel is, it isn't about much else. There are no actual relationships, no meaningful concern between characters beyond their immediate desires and attempts to manipulate each other. The first-person narration is constantly cool and oddly detached, detailing experiences only in terms of sensuality and inner musings. Still, it is very sexy on occasion, as well as funny, insightful, brutal and suspenseful. The best feature was the opportunity to observe a woman's way of expressing sex and violence
Rating:
Summary: In the Gut!
Review: Women watch out! We men are only interested in getting our sex organ into some orifice of your bodies. And then, perhaps, discarding you? Naw -- that would be too nice. We'd rather slice and dice you with mother's carving knife.
Warnings aside, the narrator of this novel, a writing teacher working with academically marginal New York students, gets steamily involved with a detective who may or may not be the perpetrator of a slasher-style murder. She secretly thrills that this guy may just be entertaining thoughts of introducing her to the capabilities of well-honed carbon steel. I must admit that the writing is terse, and the introspective meanderings of the narrator do pique interest. But where's the moral compass here? All this seems aimed at simply satisfying those who crave the darkest and most morbid visions of female-male relationships. As for me, it left me feeling like I had just been punched in the stomach -- while laid up with the flu. No great surprise (sadly) if the forthcoming movie becomes a "hit" too.
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