In the Fold: A Novel - Hardcover

Cusk, Rachel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316058270 ISBN 13: 9780316058278

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2005

Synopsis

Returning to the site of a garden party where he made lasting friendships with several eccentric characters, Michael hopes to escape his troubled marriage and brings along his taciturn young son, but discovers the place to be fraught with long-standing deceptions and broken confidences. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Reviews

Cusk’s fifth novel was long listed for the Booker Prize, an honor that somehow belies its good, but unspectacular, reviews. A work that wordsmiths will love for its dialogue, In the Fold speaks of youth, privilege, and disillusionment—but, unlike Gatsby in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby or Charles in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Michael understands the deception of appearances. Praised for her limning of psychic and emotional complexity, Cusk establishes convincing stereotypes of wealth, just to tear them down and cast a revelatory light on the treachery of it all. A few critics, however, saw Michael as a "sneering" narrator who infuses the book with meanness (Spectator); others thought too little happened to too many people. In sum, the novel is depressing, to be sure, but it’s a playful, biting comment on human relationships.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Real estate trumps true love in this often hilarious, British black comedy of manners and property values. After the second-story balcony of London lawyer Michael's townhouse crashes at his feet, nearly killing him, he decides to take a holiday to sort out his unhappy life. His wife, Rebecca, miserable with motherhood and marriage, is glad to see him and their introverted three-year-old, Hamish, hie off to the fine old country farm of Michael's university friend Adam Hansbury. But all is not well at Egypt, the oddly named Hansbury estate. Patriarch Paul is hospitalized, but no one visits him; his audacious ex-wife (Adam's mother) remains a frequent "guest" at her former home, where Paul's current wife doles out money, food and complaint to the malcontent step- and grandchildren who come and go. Even Adam is acting strangely. As the discord among the Hansburys escalates to violence and revenge, Michael becomes privy to a secret that unites the family where love and filial piety failed. Whitbread-winner Cusk (The Country Life, etc.) serves up crisp prose full of the unexpected pleasures of observation and metaphor, but this is a book about clever people behaving venally, and as such, the only person to really root for is poor silent Hamish.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

As a college student, Michael is invited by his roommate, Adam, to Adam's countryside estate in Egypt. Michael falls in love with the shabby gentility of the place and with Adam's tasteful family. Years later, with his marriage crumbling and his four-year-old son becoming stranger by the day, Michael reconnects with Adam. Adam invites Michael back to Egypt for lambing season, and Michael and his son eagerly go. Once there, though, Michael discovers that underneath their veneer of civility, Adam's family is a seething bed of resentment and anger. Michael and the reader both slowly realize that all is not as it seems in Egypt. Cusk does a mixed job of creating flawed characters. The neuroses of Adam's stepmother and Michael's wife are so believable one feels tense just reading the scenes. However, Michael's son makes unbelievable shifts between autistic-like behavior and normal communication. There is a little too much explanatory writing, including a late, unnecessary chapter in which Michael essentially recounts the whole book for a conveniently visiting friend of his wife's. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316058270
• ISBN 13: 9780316058278
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272