From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this devastating ensemble novel, Whitbread Award–winner Cusk (
Saving Agnes) exposes the roiling inner lives and not-so-quiet desperation of young mothers in the well-to-do London suburb Arlington Park. The book's single day begins with an epic rainstorm that wakes part-time private-school English teacher Juliet Randall, who spent the previous evening at a wealthier neighbor's home and was told, in front of husband Benedict, "You want to be careful.... You can start to sound strident at your age." As Amanda Clapp strains to maintain her house's empty perfection, a multi-kid play date gets out of control. Maisie Carrington feels "imprisoned for life" by her frosty, upper-crust childhood, and can barely contain her violent feelings toward her own daughters. Christine Lanham, a newcomer to the class distinction her marriage has brought her, abhors the hypocrisy that surrounds her, but knows she will never leave her family. The story line coils around each woman's home until it gathers the group for a drunken dinner party, where husbands express pleasure with their privilege while fretting that something feels amiss, and children, exhausted by their mothers' alternating neglect and desperate love, sleep like the dead—leaving the women holding hot coals of their silent insights. Their plight is an old story, but Cusk makes it incisively vivid.
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Review
"Everything about Arlington Park is original and fearless."--Francine Prose, Bookforum
"Hideously funny . . . A novel with a sense of rightness at its core and a narrative intelligence so swift and piercing it can take your breath away."--The Boston Globe
"Her books are smart and deep, telling tales of urban life that are the twenty-first-century version of Austen or Thackeray. . . . Cusk's depictions and evaluations are spot-on, her language smooth and enthralling."--Baltimore Sun
"Cusk's glory is her style, cold and hard and devastatingly specific, empathetic but not sympathetic."--Los Angeles Times
"Cusk's frank acknowledgment of maternal ambivalence is rare and wonderful."--Entertainment Weekly
"Sharp wit and commanding prose."--The New York Times
"Devastating . . . Incisively vivid."--Publishers Weekly