Scan barcode
tildahlia's review against another edition
5.0
4.5 - this book landed at the right time for me and I really enjoyed it. It’s slow in parts, but I found the loosely connected vignettes so rich and engrossing even in their mundanity. A bit of a grim lens on wifedom and motherhood but the writing is exquisite (“the sky was violent and black, bruised, swimming with clouds”). The story of Solly was particularly affecting and has given me a new appreciation for the luxury of bath oil.
sungyena's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
ingeborg_frey's review against another edition
I will let Rachel Cusk get away with it because I love her, but.
The main problem is how incredibly bitter it is, and that Cusk gives this bitterness reason with such fabricated and anonymous scenes and characters. The husbands are all sexist, distant and useless, more or less in the same way. The children are only present in perfectly sculptured scenes made to prove that motherhood is unfulfilling and horrible, really they are nothing but pieces in the huge patriarchal puzzle. (eks. when Juliet’s son refuses to put on his school uniform, it is sexism, not an immature child who wants to play and test his limits..) I think it is okay to exaggerate when writing; but here, every single scene is made to force the themes of the book on the reader. Cusk has created the perfect cake, with sexism and racism ornamenting the sides in the most visible way possible, as if she doesn’t think the reader is able to pick up on something subtle.
The mothers are all miserable, book suggests, because of their lives. Yet, they are completely unwilling to change their ways. Here is a question – are they miserable and unsatisfied because of their lives, or are they miserable and unsatisfied, which makes their lives unbearable? Cusk sort of misses the point when if this is how one feels about the characters.
These mothers direct their misery at the children with silence or physical force. They discuss the Big Capital P Problems of the World and the “poor, starving people”, either with naïve pity or with arrogant ignorance. (“we work so hard blab la bla, we never allow ourselves to enjoy anything, I won’t waste energy thinking about poor people, when in my opinion, they have brought it on themselves etc…”) This is another example of Cusk trying (I think?) to prove that the suburban family life will suck the life and emotions out of you, but instead, the reader will think these are stupid, insensitive and horrible people.
As for the writing, it is fantastic.
The main problem is how incredibly bitter it is, and that Cusk gives this bitterness reason with such fabricated and anonymous scenes and characters. The husbands are all sexist, distant and useless, more or less in the same way. The children are only present in perfectly sculptured scenes made to prove that motherhood is unfulfilling and horrible, really they are nothing but pieces in the huge patriarchal puzzle. (eks. when Juliet’s son refuses to put on his school uniform, it is sexism, not an immature child who wants to play and test his limits..) I think it is okay to exaggerate when writing; but here, every single scene is made to force the themes of the book on the reader. Cusk has created the perfect cake, with sexism and racism ornamenting the sides in the most visible way possible, as if she doesn’t think the reader is able to pick up on something subtle.
The mothers are all miserable, book suggests, because of their lives. Yet, they are completely unwilling to change their ways. Here is a question – are they miserable and unsatisfied because of their lives, or are they miserable and unsatisfied, which makes their lives unbearable? Cusk sort of misses the point when if this is how one feels about the characters.
These mothers direct their misery at the children with silence or physical force. They discuss the Big Capital P Problems of the World and the “poor, starving people”, either with naïve pity or with arrogant ignorance. (“we work so hard blab la bla, we never allow ourselves to enjoy anything, I won’t waste energy thinking about poor people, when in my opinion, they have brought it on themselves etc…”) This is another example of Cusk trying (I think?) to prove that the suburban family life will suck the life and emotions out of you, but instead, the reader will think these are stupid, insensitive and horrible people.
As for the writing, it is fantastic.
casskrug's review against another edition
4.0
once again i find that i enjoy rachel cusk’s standalone books more than the outline trilogy! arlington park follows a group of women in a suburb of london throughout the course of one day, culminating in a dinner party where they all come together. the women are all wives and mothers struggling with their positions in life, and in that i felt a lot of the themes from aftermath and a life’s work shining through. while it portrays their struggles with domesticity in a very real way, rachel cusk is also critiquing the incredible privilege of these women despite their unhappiness. each character has a different level of empathy for people that are less fortunate than them, and we see cusk’s critiques through the interactions and clashes that result from these differing opinions.
what really stands out to me in this book, however, is the rich imagery that cusk masterfully creates. there is a scene at a shopping mall that is so detailed that it feels like you’re actually there. the messy bedrooms of the children are built ip, toy by toy, mess by mess, that you can see the rooms in your mind. these descriptions do such a great job at demonstrating how the world these families live in is so mundane yet so excessive at the same time, due to their class and status. it feels like cusk’s writing is less restrained here than in the outline books, so lively and almost playful, and it’s so enjoyable to read.
what really stands out to me in this book, however, is the rich imagery that cusk masterfully creates. there is a scene at a shopping mall that is so detailed that it feels like you’re actually there. the messy bedrooms of the children are built ip, toy by toy, mess by mess, that you can see the rooms in your mind. these descriptions do such a great job at demonstrating how the world these families live in is so mundane yet so excessive at the same time, due to their class and status. it feels like cusk’s writing is less restrained here than in the outline books, so lively and almost playful, and it’s so enjoyable to read.
gingerliss's review against another edition
5.0
Not quite sure why this one has such a low average rating. As with everything of Cusk's I have read to date, I thought this was brilliant. A critical look at English middle class life through the eyes of several women each with their own various life and world views. Don't let the three star average scare you off this is a much better read than those stars would have you think. Every time I finish one of her books I want to dive straight into another one. Slowly working my way through her entire oeuvre, which I would recommend everybody to do!
kingarooski's review against another edition
3.0
Tolstoy quite famously said in Anna Karenina that, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In this book, the women seem to be unhappy in the same way: unfulfilled, ground down by responsibilities and unsatisfied with the life they've ended up with. They all have a middle-class existence in a leafy suburb or satellite town near London, they are married with relatively young children and they are each still searching for something in their life which has meaning. The insight into their minds is interesting but eventually their names and their unhappiness ground me down. It's a life common enough to many people, but while I recognised the moments of doubt and frustration they felt at times, there was just too much pain for me to enjoy the book fully.
beefmaster's review against another edition
4.0
cross-posted on my blog
Rachel Cusk, much lauded novelist challenging the form, has intrigued me for years, but I didn't want to start with her Outline trilogy for fear of making her earlier work inaccessible ("you can't go home again," etc). Arlington Park, a novel enjoying a 2.92 out of 5 on Goodreads currently, felt like a representative work. It's fiercely feminist, rooted explicitly in the experience of women, and takes its form and focus from Mrs. Dalloway. Cusk is no doubt sharply intelligent and exacting; Arlington Park has breadth with precision, almost razor-sharp in its observations and judgement. However, the novel often feels pinched, humourless, sallow. The focus is on five women, five married suburban moms with a galaxy of children, ranging from lovely to monstrous, each wife with clueless semi-absent husbands who make daily guest appearances in the drama of their lives. The women strain against the barriers and dead-ends of their suburban, middle class lives, raging against the limited horizons of possibility. While this could work as a rallying call for emancipation, for a massive restructuring of the status quo, Arlington Park more so ends up as a dour, hopeless affair. I feel even uncomfortable charging Cusk with a lack of humour. I worry I'm inching closer to calling her a feminist killjoy, a pursed lips No Fun Allowed harridan. Pinched and pursed are the best words I can come up with to describe this novel, I'm afraid, and my subject position, with a male-identified first name, positions me as this destabilizing, dismissive actor. I don't know how I can reconcile my ideological sympathy with my subjective response to the novel itself. Is this an opportunity to reexamine my own tastes, my own reactions? Am I the problem? Perhaps. Cusk is, no matter the plotting, a gorgeous craftsman of sentences. Here, she describes the parking lot of a mall during rain:
I will admit that the "deluge of rain" flinging itself might be a bit much, but the gorgeous first sentence, with its "bruised bank of cloud" and "discarded" bolts of lighting work for me. Quite often, I experienced a frisson, a shiver of pleasure from Cusk's manipulation of the quotidian, infusing it with menace and estrangement. Here, she sums up the threatening aspect of familial life:
I worry some readers might see Cusk as over-writing, as ponderous and overburdened, almost, but not quite purple (she's too talented to ever bear that charge). A lot of her sentences are long and perspicaciously focused, reminding me a lot not of Woolf but of D. H. Lawrence. She can, when it suits her, provide a stinging little rejoinder, like this Wildean bit of wit:
I can understand why she has a low rating on Goodreads: she's intelligent, aggressively so, wielding prose and effect like a hyperbolically sharpened axe, both razor sharp and bludgeoning. She's also less interested in the traditional aspects of naturalism or realism: she commands the characters, the setting, the weather to serve her needs. She's remorseless and perhaps that's what is so off-putting about her work. I'm not deterred of course. Any writer capable of crafting such beautiful prose is always going to have my interest, perhaps not my loyalty, but at least my continued attention.
Rachel Cusk, much lauded novelist challenging the form, has intrigued me for years, but I didn't want to start with her Outline trilogy for fear of making her earlier work inaccessible ("you can't go home again," etc). Arlington Park, a novel enjoying a 2.92 out of 5 on Goodreads currently, felt like a representative work. It's fiercely feminist, rooted explicitly in the experience of women, and takes its form and focus from Mrs. Dalloway. Cusk is no doubt sharply intelligent and exacting; Arlington Park has breadth with precision, almost razor-sharp in its observations and judgement. However, the novel often feels pinched, humourless, sallow. The focus is on five women, five married suburban moms with a galaxy of children, ranging from lovely to monstrous, each wife with clueless semi-absent husbands who make daily guest appearances in the drama of their lives. The women strain against the barriers and dead-ends of their suburban, middle class lives, raging against the limited horizons of possibility. While this could work as a rallying call for emancipation, for a massive restructuring of the status quo, Arlington Park more so ends up as a dour, hopeless affair. I feel even uncomfortable charging Cusk with a lack of humour. I worry I'm inching closer to calling her a feminist killjoy, a pursed lips No Fun Allowed harridan. Pinched and pursed are the best words I can come up with to describe this novel, I'm afraid, and my subject position, with a male-identified first name, positions me as this destabilizing, dismissive actor. I don't know how I can reconcile my ideological sympathy with my subjective response to the novel itself. Is this an opportunity to reexamine my own tastes, my own reactions? Am I the problem? Perhaps. Cusk is, no matter the plotting, a gorgeous craftsman of sentences. Here, she describes the parking lot of a mall during rain:
Beyond the windows a vast, bruised bank of cloud swept in over the grey prairie of the car park, extinguishing the spears of light that lay everywhere in disordered diagonals like discarded, faulty bolts of lightning. The restaurant [in the mall] darkened. A violent deluge of rain flung itself abruptly down over the defenceless landscape. (110)
I will admit that the "deluge of rain" flinging itself might be a bit much, but the gorgeous first sentence, with its "bruised bank of cloud" and "discarded" bolts of lighting work for me. Quite often, I experienced a frisson, a shiver of pleasure from Cusk's manipulation of the quotidian, infusing it with menace and estrangement. Here, she sums up the threatening aspect of familial life:
It was a dangerous place to live in, a family: it was a tumultuous as the open sea beneath a treacherous sky, the shifting allegiances, the flurries of cruelty and virtue, the great battering waves of mood and mortality, the endless alternation of storm and calm. A downpour would come or a reprieving ray of light, and in the end you didn't know what the difference was, what it all meant, what it added up to, when set against the necessity for just surviving and getting through. (193)
I worry some readers might see Cusk as over-writing, as ponderous and overburdened, almost, but not quite purple (she's too talented to ever bear that charge). A lot of her sentences are long and perspicaciously focused, reminding me a lot not of Woolf but of D. H. Lawrence. She can, when it suits her, provide a stinging little rejoinder, like this Wildean bit of wit:
She couldn't remember the last time a man looked at her as anything other than part of a boxed set that included his wife. (196)
I can understand why she has a low rating on Goodreads: she's intelligent, aggressively so, wielding prose and effect like a hyperbolically sharpened axe, both razor sharp and bludgeoning. She's also less interested in the traditional aspects of naturalism or realism: she commands the characters, the setting, the weather to serve her needs. She's remorseless and perhaps that's what is so off-putting about her work. I'm not deterred of course. Any writer capable of crafting such beautiful prose is always going to have my interest, perhaps not my loyalty, but at least my continued attention.
filiparferreira's review against another edition
5.0
Este livro não é para qualquer pessoa e compreendo que haja muita gente que nao goste. Mas... Está tão bem escrito, tem tantas camadas de emoções, sentimentos, que acabei agora e apetecia-me voltar ao início outra vez. Se somos mulheres, se somos mães, é difícil não nos identificarmos com uma ou outra destas personagens, completamente enbrenhadas no meio da vida, quase sem tempo para respirar. Tal como o outro livro dela que li, vamos acompanhando e encontrando personagens, umas ficam connosco ao longo do livro, outras aparecem, sabemos a sua história e desaparecem, quase como uma sucessão de pequenos contos. Um livro que tem tanto de desolador como de esperançoso, tal e qual como a vida, nós é que escolhemos o sentido que lhe queremos dar...