In the Fold by Rachel Cusk

A thirty something married man visits a family of eccentrics

The novel opens with college boy Michael receiving an invitation to a party at his friend Adam’s family estate, Egypt. There he encounters the rest of the Hanburys: grouchy contrarian patriarch Paul; first wife Vivian, fashionably blonde; dour second wife Vivian; and an eccentric pack of maladjusted children. However, at this first meeting, most of their names rush over Michael’s head and it isn’t until years later, when Michael has settled down with his own beautiful yet moody wife Rebecca, and preverbal three year old Hamish, that the two friends reconnect. Adam asks Michael to help with the lambing on Egypt for a week. Hijinks ensue, but the hijinks center around the restraints of marriage and family. The prevailing opinion of the book is thumbs down on both.

A fold of sheep is dumb; the fold of family is dumber. Each Hanbury seems unhappy, if not trapped, and it isn’t very long before the reader realizes that first person narrator Michael is trapped as well. The writing is hilarious, vivid, like PG Wodehouse, a contrapuntal masterpiece of hilarity. Each character has a tic, a lamentation and a typical page has at least one crazily inventive metaphor. Although sometimes the parade of laugh lines can seem relentless and the ultimate meaning of the book feels obscure. 

This book resembles a This Country Life, but This Country Life made a certain sort of narrative sense and the end of that book contained a well plotted surprise. This end of this book is merely the end of a series of fascinating patterns. There may be, in fact, perhaps one too many characters for the reader to keep track of. I want to reread this book, not because of the depth of the theme or the imagery, but so I can figure out what’s going on. I sense that lots is going on, lots about marriages and families and how, deep down, they all hate each other.

This Country Life by Rachel Cusk

An urbane slightly hysterical Londoner attempts to find solace in the country life

Stella, 29, decisively cuts her ties to the city by answering an ad for a caretaker for a disabled boy living on a grand country estate.  On her arrival she finds that seventeen year old Martin is a foul mouthed little cynic. The remainder of the eccentric Madden family terrifies Stella, especially Pamela, Martin’s icy dictatorial mother. A key plot point is Stella’s anxiety at failing to disclose she cannot drive, when the job explicitly requires lots of driving. One disastrous mishap after the other ensues.  She has an awful date with a man with a weird shaped head, falls down the stairs, tracks tar across a light colored carpet, gets sunburned and encounters the mysterious person who runs the post office. Martin pesters her until he finds out her secret reason for leaving London. Also, in a wonderful scene, she does manage to drive him to school.

This is an old fashioned satire in the English strain, sort of like Wodehouse, but maybe more like Mr. Bean or even Benny Hill. There’s a first person self obsessed narrator, the innocent thrust into the society of sharpies. The humor comes from depicting the pomposity of human beings, their folly. Also there are lots of pratfalls. The writing has a polished sprightliness and there are some truly surreal scenes, especially the scene in the post office. It took me a while to get into the story, but after a twist, the narrative attains a loopy peak of ludicrousness and I couldn’t put the book down. The ending is abrupt, but the ending makes sense. There’s a lot more here than meets the eye.

The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk

A year in the life of the Bradshaw family

Tonie, stay at home mom to the lovely Alexa, and Thomas, hardworking businessman, switch places. Tonie accepts an executive position at her university and Thomas quits his job to stay home, make dinner, dress and comfort eight year old Alexa. He also wants to deepen his knowledge of music, specifically the piano. Meanwhile, the alternating stories of Thomas’s brothers, one successful, one not, and his angry parents provide bittersweet comic relief until one day, a dramatic event causes the couple to return to their former stations.

These were linked micro stories, storylets really, about the extended Bradshaw family. The writing is traditional, but exquisite, highly technically proficient. The novel is written in the present tense (with one very short play). Although something cold is at the heart of this, a cold thoughtfulness, almost too insightful of others weaknesses, their vulnerabilities. The metaphors are amazing, especially the musical metaphors, making it so that the reader must read slowly both for simple pleasure and also to figure out exactly what is going on. The many characters are uniquely developed, all with their little arcs and neuroses. There are great sex scenes, great marital discussion scenes and great scenes of bureaucratic infighting, all done without describing too much, or even “much.”

The story opens with the question, What is art, and ends with the song of a bird. Thomas immerses himself in art, perhaps to the neglect of his family. Tonie is fascinated by work, perhaps to the neglect of her family. That story is framed by the dynamics of the extended Bradshaw family- the long festering hatreds, and yet a huge chunk of the scenes depict the family choosing to spend time together experiencing the loonieness inherent in human interaction. There’s a very grim view of families, and yet all the brothers seem to have great marriages and mentally healthy children.

If she needed a weekend job, Cusk could write sitcoms, because five or six times I laughed out loud at the crazy juxtapositions. The ending, surprisingly, is very conventional. The guilty are punished and the world’s balance restored.

Outline by Rachel Cusk

 

A story told by a woman’s reactions to the stories of others

The unnamed narrator (unnamed for the most part, that is) travels to Athens to teach a two day creative writing seminar, encountering various people on her journey who tell her their stories. The stories of friends and acquaintances are lengthy, concerning unhappy marriages and heartbreak; the Greek students in the class tell her their writing exercises which are surreal snippets. Meanwhile, as the narrator awaits an important communication about a loan approval, she looks upon seemingly happy families with grief, and her children back in England rely on her as a distant factotum. The novel ends with a sentence about spending the day in solicitude. Or do you mean solitude?

I was completely gripped while reading this spare beautiful book. Out of seemingly nothing, Cusk created a moving story about human beings – human beings and their ignorance maybe. The amazing voice holds everything together, a detached ironic gaze as the narrator encounters one self-absorbed person after the next. Chilly is also the adjective that comes to mind, chilly in grief, although there are some very funny moments. (Not that the narrator would care to notice the absurdity). In some places I laughed out loud at the shocking juxtapositions. The people the writer meets tell their egocentric stories; the narrator typically has a philosophical analytical response. In some ways, this almost seems a religious novel. There is a lot of talk of love and hate, pride and knowledge by suffering.

The word “outline” shows up at the beginning of the book and at the end of the book. Both in relation to men talking. I’m not sure what that means, but men, especially an older sophisticated Greek man, do an awful lot of talking in this book. This novel is about depicting something where it is not. It reminded me of WG Sebald, writing about a thing by never mentioning the thing but making the thing very apparent to the reader. In Sebald’s case, the Holocaust, an entire community gone; in Cusk’s case, a happy family and the assumption of happiness. The reader feels like something big is going to happen, something really huge, but all that happens is that the final person the author encounters (another writer) consumes an entire jar of honey, spoonful after spoonful.

I suppose this is the dreaded writing workshop novel. The workshop itself, however, is laughably short, two classes. Could the students even learn anything? The reader, however, does.