The Country Life: A Novel - Softcover

Cusk, Rachel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312252803 ISBN 13: 9780312252809

Publisher: Picador, 2000

Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Stella Benson answers a classified ad for an au pair, arriving in a tiny Sussex village that's home to a family that is slightly larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them is low and remote. It soon becomes clear that Stella falls short of even the meager specifications her new role requires, most visibly in the area of "aptitude for the country life." But what drove her to leave her home, job, and life in London in the first place? Why has she severed all ties with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to discuss her past? And who, exactly, is Edward?

The Country Life is a rich and subtle novel about embarrassment, awkwardness, and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises. Rachel Cusk's widely praised novel is a captivating tale of one young woman's adventures in self-discovery.

About this title

Review

In Rachel Cusk's The Country Life, city mouse Stella abruptly abandons her London career and man for a job in Sussex. Her mission: to care for and transport young Martin, the disabled son of country mice Piers and Pamela Madden, owners of Franchise Farm. Alas, all is not ambrosia in Arcadia. For a start, the Maddens are, well, maddening. The paterfamilias sports "an expression of bright vacancy on his rosy face" whereas his wife evinces a more dramatic sort of derangement: "Pamela, I realized, spoke a language of energetic emergency, in which problems were approached as violently as they were escaped from." To make matters worse, not only does our heroine lack any background in her new field--she doesn't even know how to drive. Long before she's forced behind the wheel, however, Stella is out of her element. Nature, even the very air, seems against her. In one devastating tour de force, she falls asleep in the sun and is hideously burnt (but only on one side of her body!) and then suffers an indoor avian attack.

Fans of Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm will recognize more than a few nods to her classic in Rachel Cusk's hilarious and caustic third novel. For a start, the locals are unfailingly lugubrious, and every dog seems to have it in for our girl from the city. As for her young charge, Martin is either an emotional monster or a savior--though we readers might well opt for the former. The Country Life again and again displays Cusk's eye and ear for surreal comedy and social unpleasantry. Suffice it to say that your idea of a pleasant sojourn--or even a brief walk--in the country will never be the same. --Kerry Fried

From the Publisher

"A sophisticated confection.... Delightful." --The New York Times Book Review

"A brilliant oxymoron--a serious farce so subtle that its command of the reader must be called insidious.... Bright, candid, and modestly humorous, Stella Benson lures us into complicity....Cusk's ability to keep us interested in innumerable human collisions is uncanny. We may finally learn Stella's secrets, but she remains as fascinatingly indecipherable as anyone we know." --The New Yorker

"An oddly ingratiating social comedy....Smart, literate, offbeat, confiding....A pleasure." --The Boston Globe

"Enchanting...a funny, modern Jane Eyre combined with an Anne Tyler-esque tale about escaping from the pressures of an unhappy urban life." --Newsday

"Smart, charming, and often outright hilarious." --Entertainment Weekly

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0312252803
• ISBN 13: 9780312252809
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352