Arlington Park: A Novel [Paperback]

Or whinge, as the British would say. These irritable housewives, who could be combined into two or even one character(s), seem to have never loved either their husbands or their kids. In love's place is a simmering rage whose source is murky. They seem to have chosen this suburban life for themselves and yet blame the rest of the family for it. Some might see feminists. I saw self-absorbed shrews.

Not nearly as enjoyable as Cusk's previous work, THE LUCKY ONES. The women in ARLINGTON PARK are lucky their husbands put up with them.

Where is Rachel Cusk's editor? Once again, she has written a book that leaves the reader exasperated. Instead of developing a story around the lives of one or two women, she instead features so many characters that they literally blur into one. I have never read a story where all the characters seem so alike; every one of these women is miserable, disillusioned, fed-up with motherhood, and disdainful of her husband. It was like one woman by 10 different names.

I don't know what Rachel Cusk is trying to say; I honestly felt bewildered by it all. It is very difficult to continue reading a book when you cannot stand a single character; these women were repulsive to me - thoughtless, insensitive, unloving. It's one thing to be drained by motherhood and domesticity; that isn't the issue. These women read as though they would have been despicable regardless; as single women, married women, mothers; it doesn't matter. They just aren't nice people.

It makes me wonder if Rachel Cusk is clinically depressed; the photo she chose for the back jacket is shockingly bad: lank greasy hair, dull facial expression. She's a talented writer - I hope she gets a really good editor.

The first chapter of Arlington Park describes the night a rainstorm came to an upper-middle class British suburb; "All night the rain fell on Arlington Park....The rain fell on the tortuous medieval streets....It fell on the hospital...It fell on multi-storey car parks...." Very nice for atmosphere but shamelessly lifted from the opening of Charles Dickens' Bleak House. The rest of the novel continues in this vein with Rachel Cusk borrowing from the ideas of other writers before her and giving them little or no credit.

Her idea, to explore the internal lives of several women on this particular day is good except the women she creates are all bitter, cold, loveless people who have it all and still complain. We first meet Juliet, a school teacher with a husband, two children, a nice house and yet she inexplicably feels she's been "murdered" by her husband. Why? He doesn't stop her from working. He pitches in with the kids. How does he murder her? We never know. Yet this angry worldview is something that Juliet feels duty-bound to pass onto her students. Other characters are even less sympathetic; Amanda is a compulsively neat housewife who tells her preschool age son to "shut up" when he asks questions and when she does give him an explanation we're told "she wanted to hammer him over the head with it". Later, when another child gets magic marker on her sofa her reaction is equally violent: "'I could kill you!' she whispered. 'I could kill you!' She threw him back down on the cushions" How on earth are we supposed to sympathize with this woman? Or other "protagonists" are equally unlikeable. Each is discontent and expects the world to bend over backwards to accomodate her.

I'm giving this book 2 stars for some nice prose here and there. When she's not lifting her phrasing from other writers Rachel Cusk crafts her prose nicely. Still this book isn't enoyable or particularly enlightening.