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The Country Life
Stella Benson sets off for Hilltop, a tiny Sussex village housing a family that is somewhat larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them, as au pair to their irascible son Martin - is undeniably low. What could possibly have driven her to leave her home, job and life in London for such rural ignominy? Why has she severed all contact with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to talk about her past?
The Country Life, Rachel Cusk's third novel, is a rich and subtle story about embarrassment, awkwardness and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises.
The Country Life, Rachel Cusk's third novel, is a rich and subtle story about embarrassment, awkwardness and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises.
342 pages, Paperback
First published June 20, 1997
About the author
Rachel Cusk
55 books4,252 followersRachel Cusk was born in Canada, and spent some of her childhood in Los Angeles, before her family returned to England, in 1974, when Cusk was 8 years old. She read English at New College, Oxford.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 289 reviews
September 6, 2018
This novel is a fantastically successful parody of a Eighteenth Century novel in which a young woman encounters all sorts of terrors in her first solo foray into the wilds of the country in Sussex. I had the advantage of listening to this novel, brilliantly read by Jenny Sterlin, produced by Recorded Books, but I like to think I would have picked up on the melodrama even if I’d read it.
As an undergraduate reading 18thC literature, I was tasked in one demanding class to “write an paper in the style” of one of the authors we studied that term. This novel by Cusk would be a brilliant fulfillment of that requirement. One would swear one were reading a modern Gothic romance in the style of our very earliest novels like Weiland; or The Transformation by Charles Brockton Brown, written in 1798 or Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein.
All the intrigue, drama, and fear of a young woman’s fancy are amply on display: creaking floorboards, the dangers of walking in the country on public footpaths, leering oversexed male acquaintances, dwarfish figures whose intent, whether good or bad, is undetermined. Stella is simply overtaken with every possible obstacle to living well in Sussex at Franchise Farm, a large, ancient, impressive farming estate owned in perpetuity by the Maddens. Stella has been engaged to be a companion to Matthew Madden, a teenaged handicapped scion of the family.
Cusk works over our sympathies in this novel so that every couple pages we are changing allegiances with the characters. The story has a darker heart than we’re prepared for by all the ridiculous drama of Stella’s first days at Franchise Farm, but this is meant to be discovered after several hours with the characters, so I won’t reveal it here. Suffice it to say that the overblown prose and extraordinary dilemmas faced by our narrator contrast in a comic way with the utter ordinariness of the rest of the characters, all of whom find themselves watching Stella with some degree of alarm and surprise as she settles in.
I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a novel as much, it being so completely unexpected, truly hilarious and absurd, with our heroine, through no intent of her own, ending up several days completely blotto on stolen vodka. The teenaged charge Matthew bears some responsibility for taking advantage of his much-older companion, never having seen someone with as little control or suitability for her position as the lovely Stella. As his mother says volubly, “He’s not retarded, Stella, he’s just disabled.” And very clever and interested he is, too, in all that goes on around him. For once he sees someone nearly as helpless as he is, and he rises to the challenge.
The finish is heartfelt and warm, and we discover that Stella is indeed suited to her position, and in fact we want more of her stumbling ways since she manages to bring out the best in everyone. We have been aghast at the blunt language and contentious attitudes of many of the folks we meet. But they can recognize vulnerability when they see it and do not crush those suffering from it.
I am particularly thrilled to read a novel that describes—and asks us to imagine—what life might actually be like for someone disabled. The group meetings Matthew must attend outside of his school hours are truly horrifying—all authoritarian control and insistence on talking about one’s feelings. Matthew is often overlooked and not appreciated for what he can do well.
Every novel I have read by Cusk is very different from its predecessors but equally funny. Her work is not losing its charm, no matter that I have read nearly all her oeuvre at once. I am even more convinced of my earlier assessment—certainly that Cusk is my favorite living author, but also that she is one of the greats working today. She is especially relevant in a world in which sexual relations have entered the stage of “let’s put it all on the table, dear.”
As an undergraduate reading 18thC literature, I was tasked in one demanding class to “write an paper in the style” of one of the authors we studied that term. This novel by Cusk would be a brilliant fulfillment of that requirement. One would swear one were reading a modern Gothic romance in the style of our very earliest novels like Weiland; or The Transformation by Charles Brockton Brown, written in 1798 or Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein.
All the intrigue, drama, and fear of a young woman’s fancy are amply on display: creaking floorboards, the dangers of walking in the country on public footpaths, leering oversexed male acquaintances, dwarfish figures whose intent, whether good or bad, is undetermined. Stella is simply overtaken with every possible obstacle to living well in Sussex at Franchise Farm, a large, ancient, impressive farming estate owned in perpetuity by the Maddens. Stella has been engaged to be a companion to Matthew Madden, a teenaged handicapped scion of the family.
Cusk works over our sympathies in this novel so that every couple pages we are changing allegiances with the characters. The story has a darker heart than we’re prepared for by all the ridiculous drama of Stella’s first days at Franchise Farm, but this is meant to be discovered after several hours with the characters, so I won’t reveal it here. Suffice it to say that the overblown prose and extraordinary dilemmas faced by our narrator contrast in a comic way with the utter ordinariness of the rest of the characters, all of whom find themselves watching Stella with some degree of alarm and surprise as she settles in.
I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a novel as much, it being so completely unexpected, truly hilarious and absurd, with our heroine, through no intent of her own, ending up several days completely blotto on stolen vodka. The teenaged charge Matthew bears some responsibility for taking advantage of his much-older companion, never having seen someone with as little control or suitability for her position as the lovely Stella. As his mother says volubly, “He’s not retarded, Stella, he’s just disabled.” And very clever and interested he is, too, in all that goes on around him. For once he sees someone nearly as helpless as he is, and he rises to the challenge.
The finish is heartfelt and warm, and we discover that Stella is indeed suited to her position, and in fact we want more of her stumbling ways since she manages to bring out the best in everyone. We have been aghast at the blunt language and contentious attitudes of many of the folks we meet. But they can recognize vulnerability when they see it and do not crush those suffering from it.
I am particularly thrilled to read a novel that describes—and asks us to imagine—what life might actually be like for someone disabled. The group meetings Matthew must attend outside of his school hours are truly horrifying—all authoritarian control and insistence on talking about one’s feelings. Matthew is often overlooked and not appreciated for what he can do well.
Every novel I have read by Cusk is very different from its predecessors but equally funny. Her work is not losing its charm, no matter that I have read nearly all her oeuvre at once. I am even more convinced of my earlier assessment—certainly that Cusk is my favorite living author, but also that she is one of the greats working today. She is especially relevant in a world in which sexual relations have entered the stage of “let’s put it all on the table, dear.”
January 10, 2022
I have to confess that this is the first book I have read by RC that I have not loved. This narrator is a little bit the opposite to her narrator in the outline trilogy , or more the transparency of one. The narrator in this novel is so present she is distracting. In her smartness she lets you see little else. In the trilogy everything changes by the fact that you only see speakers, the narrator allows you to see through her eyes, while in this one she never gives you a pause. There is something that feels like shes flexing her writing muscle, and that this was just demostrative of how smart she is, and how good she can write, but at that point I think her best writing was yet to come.
November 22, 2011
The first time I read this book, I read it as an intelligent and witty farce. But now, some 14 years later, I see darkness beneath the humorous incidents. The first half of the book is still laugh-out-loud funny as Stella enters the odd world of the Madden family and generates a series of absurd mishaps. Stella's inner dialogue is delicious. The author is a master of language (in that particularly wry British way) as she describes this peculiar family and the other eccentric people falling into Stella's orbit.
The author brilliantly leads the reader along as a tender relationship emerges from a rocky beginning between Stella and Martin, the wheelchair-bound 17-year-old she is responsible for. Even more delicately is how the author reveals the way her heroine, Stella, has concealed from others and herself her seriously unstable emotional state. This is revealed through a series of increasingly erratic and dangerously risky behaviors.
The novel's end doesn't have any grand conclusion or climax, but you see Stella accepting and simultaneously being accepted by the Maddens, whose collective "madness" meshes with what we now know about Stella.
To quote Martin, "It's no good saying that if people aren't perfect you're not going to love them, Stel-la. That's what families are all about. They absorb things. They grow round them. They may end up looking all twisted and ugly, but at least they're strong."
The author brilliantly leads the reader along as a tender relationship emerges from a rocky beginning between Stella and Martin, the wheelchair-bound 17-year-old she is responsible for. Even more delicately is how the author reveals the way her heroine, Stella, has concealed from others and herself her seriously unstable emotional state. This is revealed through a series of increasingly erratic and dangerously risky behaviors.
The novel's end doesn't have any grand conclusion or climax, but you see Stella accepting and simultaneously being accepted by the Maddens, whose collective "madness" meshes with what we now know about Stella.
To quote Martin, "It's no good saying that if people aren't perfect you're not going to love them, Stel-la. That's what families are all about. They absorb things. They grow round them. They may end up looking all twisted and ugly, but at least they're strong."
December 13, 2008
Probably one of the best books I've ever read. I absolutely loved Rachel's style of writing. The topic was somewhat banal and wasn't really that suspensful but I loved the English, syntax and style. I've probably re-read it about 3 times over the past 4 years. It takes a few pages to 'get into it' but couldn't put it down after that. Couldn't recommend highly enough to somebody who appreciates the English language the way it should be written/read.
July 16, 2008
An off-beat, slightly bizarre but laugh-out-loud lark of a novel. The protagonist, Stella, abandons her life in London to become a country au pair. Stella is at once the perpetrator and the victim of her own wacky circumstances; she reacts to life with a shriek and a shrug. There isn't much a plot, just a series of occurrences that we cringe through along with Stella. Utterly original.
June 7, 2016
On one level this is a very enjoyable farce that is consciously reminiscent of Cold Comfort Farm. On another it is a nightmarish tale of a naive and hapless woman trying to escape her life by accepting a position as a companion to the disabled son of an argumentative and dysfunctional upper middle class family on a remote farm in Sussex, despite an obvious lack of qualifications and experience. Cusk does not spare any of her characters much sympathy, so the comedy is pretty dark in places, and like all of her books it is stylish and beautifully written.
January 7, 2010
I found this book completely baffling. The central protagonist acts in ways that are only explicable to me as an expression of mental illness, and yet the reviews I found seemed to suggest it was her employers who were mad. I found it all to be quite in the reverse - at the very least Stella is crippled with social anxiety, misses social cues, and cannot ask for many things directly. (A towel, girl! Ask for a towel!) Her "solutions" to her problems are incredibly foolish, and the constant litany of injuries she suffers as a result - severe sunburn, hangovers, mysterious rashes, a tumble down a flight of stairs - are ludicrous for one person to suffer in the string of so few days. Much is left unexplained - the bedtime pain Stella experiences; Toby and Pamela's relationship; how any why anyone excuses Stella (because while much can be done in a spirit of compassion, why don't these people think she's disturbed?) and I understood the point of so little of many of the novel's other characters - the groundskeeper; the post office owner (who was my favorite character of the lot!)
The 'reading group' guide at the back of the book "helpfully" pointed out that the story borrows much of its plot from Jane Eyre. If that's true, it would explain much - especially in the degree to which I disliked the story. I never got along very well with the Brontés and their simpering, fragile, swooning heroines. Give me the sharp wit and witticisms of an Elizabeth Bennett anyday.
The 'reading group' guide at the back of the book "helpfully" pointed out that the story borrows much of its plot from Jane Eyre. If that's true, it would explain much - especially in the degree to which I disliked the story. I never got along very well with the Brontés and their simpering, fragile, swooning heroines. Give me the sharp wit and witticisms of an Elizabeth Bennett anyday.
January 26, 2020
Satire should be fairly obvious early on. This really wasn't, not until after fifty pages. I made it to page 71, but if I can't take this seriously, it feels pointless to continue.
The author writes beautifully. I was ready to read everything she's written. Very disappointed. I was pulled right in by the first few pages. If I'd have known going in that this was satire, I'd have known right away that I wasn't going to appreciate the "humor".
Why waste writing this terrific on satire? Why start with a premise this compelling and then ... poke fun at the whole thing? And Jenny Sterlin does the audio. One of my favorite narrators.
What a waste. Don't read this unless you're a fan of British satire.
The author writes beautifully. I was ready to read everything she's written. Very disappointed. I was pulled right in by the first few pages. If I'd have known going in that this was satire, I'd have known right away that I wasn't going to appreciate the "humor".
Why waste writing this terrific on satire? Why start with a premise this compelling and then ... poke fun at the whole thing? And Jenny Sterlin does the audio. One of my favorite narrators.
What a waste. Don't read this unless you're a fan of British satire.
July 27, 2010
I remember reading a goodreads review of The Country Life that stated the narrator was pathologically nervous. Naturally, I thought, "Oh, you must be one of those hardy extroverts! Leave the sensitive girls alone!"
Having read it, I can tell you this character is pathologically nervous. Even the narrative style is indicative of anxiety: halting, digressing, perseverating. It disturbed and then frightened me how much I could relate to Stella. These are my fears, my humiliations, my resentments. These are my rationalizations and prejudices. Normally, I love to see myself reflected in literature -- but with a spoon of romanticism. Give me some kinda Lady of Shalott, Ophelia somethin'! Cusk was unrelenting.
Granted my type takes a lot of abuse in literature, infuriating feminists with her wispiness and misogynists with her general reluctance to undress. There, I can see the agenda. Cusk has no agenda beyond candor. She understands this character because a part of her, at least, is this character.
Stella fears nothing because she fears everything. Her behavior in increasingly covert, increasingly reckless. I can certainly understand how some readers might want to throw this book in exasperation. Me, I just cringed for Stella and her terrible choices...yet couldn't look away. What was apparently being played for comedy became a horrifying spectacle.
Overall, I think it's a good book, absorbing, honest. But painful to read.
*puts fingers in ears and la-la-la's...snatches of old tunes, as one incapable of her own distress*
Having read it, I can tell you this character is pathologically nervous. Even the narrative style is indicative of anxiety: halting, digressing, perseverating. It disturbed and then frightened me how much I could relate to Stella. These are my fears, my humiliations, my resentments. These are my rationalizations and prejudices. Normally, I love to see myself reflected in literature -- but with a spoon of romanticism. Give me some kinda Lady of Shalott, Ophelia somethin'! Cusk was unrelenting.
Granted my type takes a lot of abuse in literature, infuriating feminists with her wispiness and misogynists with her general reluctance to undress. There, I can see the agenda. Cusk has no agenda beyond candor. She understands this character because a part of her, at least, is this character.
Stella fears nothing because she fears everything. Her behavior in increasingly covert, increasingly reckless. I can certainly understand how some readers might want to throw this book in exasperation. Me, I just cringed for Stella and her terrible choices...yet couldn't look away. What was apparently being played for comedy became a horrifying spectacle.
Overall, I think it's a good book, absorbing, honest. But painful to read.
*puts fingers in ears and la-la-la's...snatches of old tunes, as one incapable of her own distress*
January 2, 2010
Rachel Cusk has a completely unique voice, which is perhaps best described as meticulously observed panic. As a stylist, I don't think she can be beaten. She's also impossibly funny.
December 25, 2023
I was bewildered, after I had done up the buttons, by the fact that the material hung about me in great folds. Finding no other explanation, I realized that I appeared to have shrunk quite drastically. That this should have happened in the few days since I had last worn the dress, without cause and without my really noticing, was profoundly disturbing. It was as if I were disappearing; or rather, as if the space I was entitled to occupy were being gradually withdrawn. The change made me nervous, as if without weight I might be overlooked or swept away.
October 1, 2011
The Country Life by Rachel Cusk presents several promises, but eventually seems to break most of them. When Stella Benson, a twenty-nine-year-old, leaves home suddenly to take up a private care assistant’s job in darkest south England, it is clear that she is running away. From what we do learn later, but by then we perhaps care rather less about the circumstances.
From the start there was a problem with the book’s point of view. Stella presents a first person narrative couched in a conventional past tense. Events – albeit from the past – unfold along a linear time frame, but despite her removed perspective, she apparently never reflects beyond the present she reports. Given Stella’s character, this may be no more than an expression of her scattered immediacy, but that only becomes clear as we get to know her via her actions. This apparent contradiction of perspectives has to be ignored if the book is to work, but once overcome The Country Life is worth the effort.
Stella - to say the least – is not a very competent person. But then no-one else in this little southern village seems to have much about them. She becomes a live-in personal carer for Martin Madden, a disabled seventeen-year-old who lives with his rather dotty parents on their apparently luxurious farm. Stella has neither experience, nor presumably references, nor the pre-requisite driving licence. Her employers don’t check anything, despite their reported bad experiences in the past. Thus Stella becomes part of a rather mad family called Madden.
Stella steadily learns more about the Maddens. They have their past, both collectively and individually. Pamela, a wiry, sun-tanned matriarch, is married to Piers. They have children, all of whom seem to have inherited different mixes of the foibles on offer. There’s a local scandal or two, rumours of mis-treatment, sexual impropriety and more, but it always seems to dissolve into innuendo. This, perhaps, is the country life.
Stella herself is incompetent in the extreme. She gets sunburnt - in England(!), soils her shoes with melted tar from the road, gets drunk several times, falls into the pool, gets lost, cuts up her clothing, behaves inappropriately, steals on demand and can’t find the garden gate. It’s quite a week. As the book progresses, it seems unsure whether it should be a sit-com or a farce.
But at the centre of The Country Life is Stella’s developing relationship with Martin. He is used to being the centre of attention and knows how to play the part, how to manipulate. He may, it seems, have inherited much from his mother and perhaps a lot less from his father.
The Country Life is beautifully written. It is both funny and engaging. Stella’s life becomes increasingly a farce, however, and this crowds out some of the other themes that might have come more interestingly to the fore. Rachel Cusk’s writing is always fluent, perhaps overdone here and there, but when you are that good at it, a little over-egging just adds to the richness.
From the start there was a problem with the book’s point of view. Stella presents a first person narrative couched in a conventional past tense. Events – albeit from the past – unfold along a linear time frame, but despite her removed perspective, she apparently never reflects beyond the present she reports. Given Stella’s character, this may be no more than an expression of her scattered immediacy, but that only becomes clear as we get to know her via her actions. This apparent contradiction of perspectives has to be ignored if the book is to work, but once overcome The Country Life is worth the effort.
Stella - to say the least – is not a very competent person. But then no-one else in this little southern village seems to have much about them. She becomes a live-in personal carer for Martin Madden, a disabled seventeen-year-old who lives with his rather dotty parents on their apparently luxurious farm. Stella has neither experience, nor presumably references, nor the pre-requisite driving licence. Her employers don’t check anything, despite their reported bad experiences in the past. Thus Stella becomes part of a rather mad family called Madden.
Stella steadily learns more about the Maddens. They have their past, both collectively and individually. Pamela, a wiry, sun-tanned matriarch, is married to Piers. They have children, all of whom seem to have inherited different mixes of the foibles on offer. There’s a local scandal or two, rumours of mis-treatment, sexual impropriety and more, but it always seems to dissolve into innuendo. This, perhaps, is the country life.
Stella herself is incompetent in the extreme. She gets sunburnt - in England(!), soils her shoes with melted tar from the road, gets drunk several times, falls into the pool, gets lost, cuts up her clothing, behaves inappropriately, steals on demand and can’t find the garden gate. It’s quite a week. As the book progresses, it seems unsure whether it should be a sit-com or a farce.
But at the centre of The Country Life is Stella’s developing relationship with Martin. He is used to being the centre of attention and knows how to play the part, how to manipulate. He may, it seems, have inherited much from his mother and perhaps a lot less from his father.
The Country Life is beautifully written. It is both funny and engaging. Stella’s life becomes increasingly a farce, however, and this crowds out some of the other themes that might have come more interestingly to the fore. Rachel Cusk’s writing is always fluent, perhaps overdone here and there, but when you are that good at it, a little over-egging just adds to the richness.
March 9, 2009
I am profoundly jealous of this piece of writing.
January 26, 2023
Upon reflection, and rereading some of my underlined quotes this has quickly become a favourite. Another win for Cusk.
September 26, 2022
The thing I have realized after reading three books by Cusk is I need to do background reading and then Google up interpretations because I cannot, to save my life, make sense in one go when I am reading her books. And yet, I am arrested by the way she writes and puts thoughts and actions into words, compelling me to pick her books up and continue reading. She is an amazing author with enviable command over words, which in my opinion once again, borders between genius and pretentious. I envy it, because I can't write like her.
The Country life is a satire on well, a city girl's escape to lead a country life to leave behind her past life for whatever reasons, which is given a little glimpse of in the end, but by then, it really doesn't matter. The second-hand embarrassment is strong in this one. The narrator, Stella, is unreliable, socially awkward and, as the book progresses, increasingly reckless, and Cusk, in her way of subtlety, puts before the readers the graveness of the situation without making it obvious. Spoiler alert, it was the same with domestic violence in In the Fold and an emotionally unstable protagonist in this one. You have to read the series of actions and thoughts, and then zoom out of the book to understand the event that actually happens.
I was genuinely scared for the unfolding of the book, going by how Stella is adjusting (or rather misfitting) in the country life, so that way, the book was a little underwhelming. Nothing really happens. We just observe a segment of Stella's life without much information on the before or after of that part. The key of the book is her relationship with Martin, the 17-years "disabled" child of the Maddens. And it is comforting in the end how she is now a part of it all anyway.
Overall, I am in much conflict about what I felt about this book, but I really liked reading it.
The Country life is a satire on well, a city girl's escape to lead a country life to leave behind her past life for whatever reasons, which is given a little glimpse of in the end, but by then, it really doesn't matter. The second-hand embarrassment is strong in this one. The narrator, Stella, is unreliable, socially awkward and, as the book progresses, increasingly reckless, and Cusk, in her way of subtlety, puts before the readers the graveness of the situation without making it obvious. Spoiler alert, it was the same with domestic violence in In the Fold and an emotionally unstable protagonist in this one. You have to read the series of actions and thoughts, and then zoom out of the book to understand the event that actually happens.
I was genuinely scared for the unfolding of the book, going by how Stella is adjusting (or rather misfitting) in the country life, so that way, the book was a little underwhelming. Nothing really happens. We just observe a segment of Stella's life without much information on the before or after of that part. The key of the book is her relationship with Martin, the 17-years "disabled" child of the Maddens. And it is comforting in the end how she is now a part of it all anyway.
Overall, I am in much conflict about what I felt about this book, but I really liked reading it.
January 19, 2015
I stayed up late to finish this book last night. I’d finally gotten to about page 300 and thought: finally, something is about to happen . . . we’re getting to the point. But alas, no. Literally, when I finished the last page of the book, I turned the page and said: is my book defective? Because it couldn’t possibly end there. But after I checked the page count on Amazon, I realized that it was in fact over. And then I wanted to give a frustrated shriek.
The book was an odd one for me. I often have a difficult time getting into a book. In fact, it’s the very rare book that I don’t fight with at least the first 30-50 pages trying to get into it. But when I do, it’s usually next to impossible to get me to set it down before it’s done. The Country Life didn’t get me interested until about 150 pages into it. And I only kept reading because I thought it was a “city girl deals with transformation into country life and this is how it happened” kind of book, which I usually adore. But it wasn’t really a book about that at all.
The whole book was about some neurotic, if not actually truly unbalanced, woman who ran away from her life. We’re told that she did it because she saw her life fully mapped out before her and she wanted to escape that. But you never get the feeling that that was it. I think the handicapped charge that she is companion to in the country ultimately hits it on the head toward the end of the book: she’s a coward and she’s selfish. The story starts with Stella, the neurotic escapist, writing some rather scathing letters to people in her soon-to-be former life. And I understood that. I think we’ve all had a moment or two where writing such a letter sounded awfully satisfying. Ms. Cusk makes them deliberately vague so that she has somewhere to take the book later on. But she doesn’t.
The whole story is a series of random things that the author mentions once or twice that seem relevant, possibly important to the story, and then she never brings them up again. By the end of the story, I think that Stella is merely a lush and wonder if she is actually going to end up bedding her charge at some point either in a drunken moment or in some contrived situation that sounds unselfish but is in fact the ultimate in selfishness.
This book gets two thumbs down from me. A total waste of my time. The writing was sometimes well-done and at others truly horrendous. The plot ebbs and flows along until you realize that there actually is no plot. The story isn’t plausible and by the end, it’s not that you care what happens, you just have a 350 page investment upon which you feel entitled to having something be delivered. Boo.
The book was an odd one for me. I often have a difficult time getting into a book. In fact, it’s the very rare book that I don’t fight with at least the first 30-50 pages trying to get into it. But when I do, it’s usually next to impossible to get me to set it down before it’s done. The Country Life didn’t get me interested until about 150 pages into it. And I only kept reading because I thought it was a “city girl deals with transformation into country life and this is how it happened” kind of book, which I usually adore. But it wasn’t really a book about that at all.
The whole book was about some neurotic, if not actually truly unbalanced, woman who ran away from her life. We’re told that she did it because she saw her life fully mapped out before her and she wanted to escape that. But you never get the feeling that that was it. I think the handicapped charge that she is companion to in the country ultimately hits it on the head toward the end of the book: she’s a coward and she’s selfish. The story starts with Stella, the neurotic escapist, writing some rather scathing letters to people in her soon-to-be former life. And I understood that. I think we’ve all had a moment or two where writing such a letter sounded awfully satisfying. Ms. Cusk makes them deliberately vague so that she has somewhere to take the book later on. But she doesn’t.
The whole story is a series of random things that the author mentions once or twice that seem relevant, possibly important to the story, and then she never brings them up again. By the end of the story, I think that Stella is merely a lush and wonder if she is actually going to end up bedding her charge at some point either in a drunken moment or in some contrived situation that sounds unselfish but is in fact the ultimate in selfishness.
This book gets two thumbs down from me. A total waste of my time. The writing was sometimes well-done and at others truly horrendous. The plot ebbs and flows along until you realize that there actually is no plot. The story isn’t plausible and by the end, it’s not that you care what happens, you just have a 350 page investment upon which you feel entitled to having something be delivered. Boo.
April 4, 2016
In some ways, reading a book by Rachel Cusk is simply painful. Not because it's badly written - far from it - but because Cusk has a way of unraveling her characters' mental states until they stand fully exposed and defenseless before the reader. There is quite a lot we don't know about Stel la, the main character. Why did she leave her husband? Why did she marry him in the first place? Still, when Cusk gives us access to Stella's own ruminations about her motivation or actions, we are ruthlessly drawn in. Rarely have I encountered an author who's so good at showing us how people think - the back and forth, the self justifications... all of it is so accurate it hurts.
Not a whole lot happens in this book but that is clearly part of living 'the country life'. Because of the lack of action (though perhaps not of drama), the meaning assigned to small events is magnified. Watching stella develop her relationship to her charge (?), Martin, the young, handicapped man whose companion she was hired to be, is plot enough. Cusk never actually says what's 'wrong' with Martin though details make it appear he may have CP. Whatever his issues, he is never just the 'disabled person' - a feature of the novel I especially appreciated. Martin is neither saint nor sinner - he is young man in a wheelchair who occasionally exploits his handicap to get his way and occasionally deplores it. In other words, he is a fully developed character and his sympathy for Stella is finally what signals she will be saved. It is also the chief saving grace of this ultimately satisfying novel.
Not a whole lot happens in this book but that is clearly part of living 'the country life'. Because of the lack of action (though perhaps not of drama), the meaning assigned to small events is magnified. Watching stella develop her relationship to her charge (?), Martin, the young, handicapped man whose companion she was hired to be, is plot enough. Cusk never actually says what's 'wrong' with Martin though details make it appear he may have CP. Whatever his issues, he is never just the 'disabled person' - a feature of the novel I especially appreciated. Martin is neither saint nor sinner - he is young man in a wheelchair who occasionally exploits his handicap to get his way and occasionally deplores it. In other words, he is a fully developed character and his sympathy for Stella is finally what signals she will be saved. It is also the chief saving grace of this ultimately satisfying novel.
November 9, 2017
The Country Life is an odd book. I disliked the narrator with her nervous tics, her incapacities and especially her stiffly artificial manner of speaking. The story focuses on the narrator, Stella, who in time we discover is a wife of a week’s duration fleeing her husband to take a position as companion to a disabled 17-year old boy. His well-to-do parents are difficult with secrets in their pasts. There are three other grown children and various country dependents, all quite odd in their own ways. Stella’s interaction with her charge, Martin, is the main theme of this somewhat plotless novel. Cusk has laden the book with enough unsolved mysteries to keep the reader turning the pages to find no denouement whatsoever, just an oblique hint of possibilities to come. While I can’t say I liked this novel, I admit it is strangely arresting.
October 5, 2017
Rachel Cusk does a great job of creating a narrator who is unreliable, but not necessarily an unreliable narrator. The protagonist is accident prone, but so many of her accidents can be attributed to her want of attention, or to her being distracted so that she does not think ahead. Nevertheless, she is a mostly sympathetic character: principled, for the most part, until it becomes inconvenient to remain so.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
September 22, 2014
This one just didn't work for me. I didn't see the humor that some other readers described; I was only mildly interested in the characters and kept reading in hopes that something was going to happen or there was ultimately going to be a point, but... nothing. There are far too many books on my reading list; I fear I just wasted precious time that could have been put to much better use.
September 8, 2018
Loving the Country Life
Everything about Rachel Cusk’s "The Country Life" is at odds with the ease suggested by the book’s title. When protagonist Stella Benson flees her complications in London—job, parents, husband—for reasons she doesn’t disclose other than that she’s unhappy, she hopes life will be sweeter and simpler in the country. She’s wrong, delightfully so. Cusk starts the story at a fast clip and keeps the pace speeding like an arrow, sweeping the reader — breathless and clueless as Stella — into the romp. Stella can’t help herself from becoming ensnarled in predicaments from cheerfully uncomfortable to hilaroulsy life-threatening. Each day of her new country life sprouts opportunity for disasters. The reader sees them coming at the same time as Stella, or a moment before she does, which makes them doubly sportive.
Lesson: Give your character trouble and misery
Teachers and books on writing craft push us to give our characters trouble. Make them miserable! Put them in predicaments! Watch them squirm! I’ve always found this hard to do. I don’t like trouble; I prefer happiness. But happiness start to finish contains no transformation, no character arc. Early in my writing career, I learned about the Greek masks of Comedy and Tragedy. A Comedy starts with misery, ends with happiness (or promise of.) A Tragedy starts with happiness, and ends with misery (or promise of.)
"The Country Life" is a Comedy. Whatever Stella endured in her London life was bad enough to make her want to escape to an anticipated idyllic life in the country. But if Cusk handed Stella what she wanted, there would be no story. From the moment Stella steps foot in the country, she is plagued by sunburn, insect bites, tarred roads, allergies, heat — a myriad of problems. Her off-balance sense of self engenders pratfalls, thievery, near car-wrecks, pet abuse, and near-drowning. This woman lives on the edge. She flings, has flung, and will continue to fling herself at life, even after the story’s end. She’s a flinger. And we love her for it!
She’s propelled by opposite forces within — bravery and embarrassment (or desire to avoid it), meticulous obsession and recklessness. She intends well, but misses, and suffers the consequences of her actions. Hey—better her than us! The joy of this kind of book is in our believing that Stella will survive, maybe even triumph!, as we cheer her on from our comfortable reading spot.
Lesson: For a Comedy, make trouble comedic
We learn a valuable lesson from Cusk about dishing out trouble: To keep it comedic, spoon a dollop of black humor. Stella has no driver’s license, but chauffeurs her ward, Martin, to town. He’s a disabled teenager, wheelchair bound, for whom she’s been hired as a companion and helper. They make it to town—barely—to Martin’s school and need to get back home. In the parking lot, Martin encourages her (what teenager wouldn’t love the adrenalin rush of this illicit ride!), “You’re doing fine, Stel-la.” She protests, “I could get us both killed….What if I injured you? You could be crippled for life.”
Lesson: Give trouble a purpose
Martin, a wise young man with family problems of his own, engages Stella in philosophical discussions that illumine her plight—we still aren’t sure, really, why she’s fled London.
[Stella speaking:] “I happen to believe that the search for happiness is often itself the greatest cause of unhappiness.”
“But if you were happy, you wouldn’t be searching,” said Martin.
“I didn’t say I was. I was speaking generally. I think it is almost impossible to be happy and to know yourself to be so at one and the same time. People believe that happiness is a goal, as opposed merely to the absence of problems. Looking for happiness is like looking for love. How do you know when you’ve found it?”
“I always imagined they came together,” said Martin.
“Nonsense. Love makes people more miserable than anything else.”
Cusk could have told us more about the character’s early problems through exposition or had Stella narrate her own back story. But this masterful author writes a character who give us her own evidence for comparison. We see the misery she encounters through her misguided choices and get a sense that whatever the misery was that she escaped from in London was, at least in part, of her own making.
Lesson: Mirror emotions in the physical
Love and all its complexities — the difficulties of loving and being loved—are what Stella is escaping from and discovering in "The Country Life." But love is abstract. Insect bites, sunburn, dangerous roads and near drowning are not.
Cusk uses an old mirror found in the cottage where Stella lives as a prop, in standard literary and inventive ways, to show us Stella. Through her reflection, Stella reveals her interior thoughts to herself and us. Our heroine (or anti-heroine) is, at the same time, so self-absorbed and detached from herself physically and emotionally that she can barely function. Her descriptions have her at arm’s length to herself. “Sensing that I stood on the brink of an abyss of self-consciousness—a void into which I often fall, rendering me unable, even over several hours, to dress myself—I dug deeper into the cases and was surprised to find a summer dress I did not remember packing. It seemed imperative that having made this discovery I activate it immediately and with determination, before my first, faint protests…”
As the story progresses, Stella becomes more real to herself and us, more present in her body, and more aware of herself in the grander scheme of life.
“I stood transfixed by the mirror, for some time, accustoming myself to this stranger of whose desires and motives I was not entirely sure.”
“Whatever cream it was that the creature had applied to my sunburn had worked wonders, for when I got up and looked in the wardrobe mirror I saw that the colour of my skin had completely altered from emrgency red to an attractive brown.”
““Before I could fend it off, the sight had filled me with a sense of my destitution….What surprised me was to realize how familiar this sight was. I had seen it on busy London pavements, amidst a throng of faces; one or two whose eyes looked out from their bodies as if from behind bars, as they paid for the crime of permitting their misfortunes to outweigh the space their flesh was entitled to occupy.
Stella’s arc transforms her from being armored and distant from herself to begin to being able to be close to at least one other person. She’s confronted herself in the mirror but still has trouble facing the choices she made in abandoning her past. Finally, someone from her former life chances to find her in the country and will be at the dinner table with Martin’s family, to whom Stella has lied and omitted truths. Martin advises her…“Everyone has to face things. It’s the only way.” He helps her gather courage.
In the final scene, we don’t just glimpse her or see her reflection, we are in her skin “..presently I felt the warm clammy pressure of another hand, Martin’s, taking one of mine.”
A clammy hand may not be Stella’s idea of true happiness, but in the manner of a Comedy, the story promises happiness for this character at some point beyond the book’s ending.
For more book discussions of writing craft and lessons from masterful authors, visit Christine Walker’s blog https://readtowritebooks.com
For videos about writing fiction, visit her youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXwb...
For an online course in Writing Fiction, visit https://courses.christinewalker.net
Everything about Rachel Cusk’s "The Country Life" is at odds with the ease suggested by the book’s title. When protagonist Stella Benson flees her complications in London—job, parents, husband—for reasons she doesn’t disclose other than that she’s unhappy, she hopes life will be sweeter and simpler in the country. She’s wrong, delightfully so. Cusk starts the story at a fast clip and keeps the pace speeding like an arrow, sweeping the reader — breathless and clueless as Stella — into the romp. Stella can’t help herself from becoming ensnarled in predicaments from cheerfully uncomfortable to hilaroulsy life-threatening. Each day of her new country life sprouts opportunity for disasters. The reader sees them coming at the same time as Stella, or a moment before she does, which makes them doubly sportive.
Lesson: Give your character trouble and misery
Teachers and books on writing craft push us to give our characters trouble. Make them miserable! Put them in predicaments! Watch them squirm! I’ve always found this hard to do. I don’t like trouble; I prefer happiness. But happiness start to finish contains no transformation, no character arc. Early in my writing career, I learned about the Greek masks of Comedy and Tragedy. A Comedy starts with misery, ends with happiness (or promise of.) A Tragedy starts with happiness, and ends with misery (or promise of.)
"The Country Life" is a Comedy. Whatever Stella endured in her London life was bad enough to make her want to escape to an anticipated idyllic life in the country. But if Cusk handed Stella what she wanted, there would be no story. From the moment Stella steps foot in the country, she is plagued by sunburn, insect bites, tarred roads, allergies, heat — a myriad of problems. Her off-balance sense of self engenders pratfalls, thievery, near car-wrecks, pet abuse, and near-drowning. This woman lives on the edge. She flings, has flung, and will continue to fling herself at life, even after the story’s end. She’s a flinger. And we love her for it!
She’s propelled by opposite forces within — bravery and embarrassment (or desire to avoid it), meticulous obsession and recklessness. She intends well, but misses, and suffers the consequences of her actions. Hey—better her than us! The joy of this kind of book is in our believing that Stella will survive, maybe even triumph!, as we cheer her on from our comfortable reading spot.
Lesson: For a Comedy, make trouble comedic
We learn a valuable lesson from Cusk about dishing out trouble: To keep it comedic, spoon a dollop of black humor. Stella has no driver’s license, but chauffeurs her ward, Martin, to town. He’s a disabled teenager, wheelchair bound, for whom she’s been hired as a companion and helper. They make it to town—barely—to Martin’s school and need to get back home. In the parking lot, Martin encourages her (what teenager wouldn’t love the adrenalin rush of this illicit ride!), “You’re doing fine, Stel-la.” She protests, “I could get us both killed….What if I injured you? You could be crippled for life.”
Lesson: Give trouble a purpose
Martin, a wise young man with family problems of his own, engages Stella in philosophical discussions that illumine her plight—we still aren’t sure, really, why she’s fled London.
[Stella speaking:] “I happen to believe that the search for happiness is often itself the greatest cause of unhappiness.”
“But if you were happy, you wouldn’t be searching,” said Martin.
“I didn’t say I was. I was speaking generally. I think it is almost impossible to be happy and to know yourself to be so at one and the same time. People believe that happiness is a goal, as opposed merely to the absence of problems. Looking for happiness is like looking for love. How do you know when you’ve found it?”
“I always imagined they came together,” said Martin.
“Nonsense. Love makes people more miserable than anything else.”
Cusk could have told us more about the character’s early problems through exposition or had Stella narrate her own back story. But this masterful author writes a character who give us her own evidence for comparison. We see the misery she encounters through her misguided choices and get a sense that whatever the misery was that she escaped from in London was, at least in part, of her own making.
Lesson: Mirror emotions in the physical
Love and all its complexities — the difficulties of loving and being loved—are what Stella is escaping from and discovering in "The Country Life." But love is abstract. Insect bites, sunburn, dangerous roads and near drowning are not.
Cusk uses an old mirror found in the cottage where Stella lives as a prop, in standard literary and inventive ways, to show us Stella. Through her reflection, Stella reveals her interior thoughts to herself and us. Our heroine (or anti-heroine) is, at the same time, so self-absorbed and detached from herself physically and emotionally that she can barely function. Her descriptions have her at arm’s length to herself. “Sensing that I stood on the brink of an abyss of self-consciousness—a void into which I often fall, rendering me unable, even over several hours, to dress myself—I dug deeper into the cases and was surprised to find a summer dress I did not remember packing. It seemed imperative that having made this discovery I activate it immediately and with determination, before my first, faint protests…”
As the story progresses, Stella becomes more real to herself and us, more present in her body, and more aware of herself in the grander scheme of life.
“I stood transfixed by the mirror, for some time, accustoming myself to this stranger of whose desires and motives I was not entirely sure.”
“Whatever cream it was that the creature had applied to my sunburn had worked wonders, for when I got up and looked in the wardrobe mirror I saw that the colour of my skin had completely altered from emrgency red to an attractive brown.”
““Before I could fend it off, the sight had filled me with a sense of my destitution….What surprised me was to realize how familiar this sight was. I had seen it on busy London pavements, amidst a throng of faces; one or two whose eyes looked out from their bodies as if from behind bars, as they paid for the crime of permitting their misfortunes to outweigh the space their flesh was entitled to occupy.
Stella’s arc transforms her from being armored and distant from herself to begin to being able to be close to at least one other person. She’s confronted herself in the mirror but still has trouble facing the choices she made in abandoning her past. Finally, someone from her former life chances to find her in the country and will be at the dinner table with Martin’s family, to whom Stella has lied and omitted truths. Martin advises her…“Everyone has to face things. It’s the only way.” He helps her gather courage.
In the final scene, we don’t just glimpse her or see her reflection, we are in her skin “..presently I felt the warm clammy pressure of another hand, Martin’s, taking one of mine.”
A clammy hand may not be Stella’s idea of true happiness, but in the manner of a Comedy, the story promises happiness for this character at some point beyond the book’s ending.
For more book discussions of writing craft and lessons from masterful authors, visit Christine Walker’s blog https://readtowritebooks.com
For videos about writing fiction, visit her youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXwb...
For an online course in Writing Fiction, visit https://courses.christinewalker.net
February 26, 2021
I think I’ve said this before, but Rachel Cusk is one of the most skilled writers at work today. Her command over language (not to mention her skill and ability to inject just the right amount of observational humor) is unparalleled amongst her contemporaries.
The Country Life is a peculiar book from her backlist, published some twenty years ago; but still shows off her skill in ways that many readers would not come to discover until her breakthrough novel Outline (I count myself in this category and continue to find her “annihilated perspective” in the Outline trilogy to be one of high points of recent contemporary fiction).
This novel is a take on the whole “posh city dweller flees to the countryside for a different pace of life” with a truly memorable cast of unsavory characters and comedic scenes that are executed superbly with Cusk’s aforementioned pen.
Stella Benson is our bumbling protagonist, leaving behind her life in London in order to work as an au pair to a disabled teenager on a farm in Sussex. Along the way we meet the larger-than-life mother Pamela, mysterious brother Toby, among others. Secrets are revealed, allegiances shift; I couldn’t put it down.
This is a very British book, in style, scope and humor. I simply adored it and will continue to sing the praises of Cusk. The Country Life is a sophisticated, entertaining read that we don’t see published enough these days. 4.5/5
The Country Life is a peculiar book from her backlist, published some twenty years ago; but still shows off her skill in ways that many readers would not come to discover until her breakthrough novel Outline (I count myself in this category and continue to find her “annihilated perspective” in the Outline trilogy to be one of high points of recent contemporary fiction).
This novel is a take on the whole “posh city dweller flees to the countryside for a different pace of life” with a truly memorable cast of unsavory characters and comedic scenes that are executed superbly with Cusk’s aforementioned pen.
Stella Benson is our bumbling protagonist, leaving behind her life in London in order to work as an au pair to a disabled teenager on a farm in Sussex. Along the way we meet the larger-than-life mother Pamela, mysterious brother Toby, among others. Secrets are revealed, allegiances shift; I couldn’t put it down.
This is a very British book, in style, scope and humor. I simply adored it and will continue to sing the praises of Cusk. The Country Life is a sophisticated, entertaining read that we don’t see published enough these days. 4.5/5
January 22, 2015
Stella drops everything, leaves everything in London behind, including her job, family and partner, to become a caretaker for an adolescent boy on a wealthy farm in the English countryside. She wants a clean break. All and all there maybe isn't much here, but the language is wonderfully precise and characters are each entertaining in their own dysfunctional ways. I was entertained as Stella narratives every thing and every thought so carefully, precisely and rationally, and yet what she does consistently makes little sense for her or anyone else.
December 15, 2015
Maybe you have to be English to get this book. It's meant to be a dark comic novel parodying the city-person-moves-to-the-country genre, but many of the jokes fall flat to my American ear--and I'm an Anglophile obsessed with Diary of a Nobody, Love, Nina, and other similar books. None of the early setups pay off, and maybe that's part of the joke, but I found it disappointing. I did believe utterly in all of the characters, and loved Martin, the wry disabled kid whom the protagonist is hired to care for.
July 28, 2011
A very good book. Each sentence is carefully crafted, each mundane action and thought is imbued with drama. I bet she worked her butt off writing this book. The ending was a little disappointing, as the plot took an unlikely turn. But overall, a very good book.
August 23, 2024
A hugely enjoyable read, primarily because Rachel Cusk’s observational prowess is UNMATCHED. I don’t think I’ve read anything else that captures awkwardness so brilliantly. I was wincing and laughing out loud at Stella’s conversations with various members of the Madden clan, and although her instincts in all situations are invariably melodramatic and insane, I did also see parts of myself in her — she was like the hyperbolic version of all my own social faux pas. I could read descriptions of her interactions with Pamela endlessly, it was so entertaining.
But it’s not 5 stars because I ultimately didn’t feel that convinced by the ending. Is convinced the right word? It didn’t really make me feel anything but I got the sense that it was supposed to. I think the problem was that although I devoured Stella’s actions and thoughts, I didn’t actually sympathise with her enough (at all!) to care about why she left her old life behind. The letters that open the book felt like just another characteristic overreaction on her part. So when the plot started to hinge on the slow reveal of why she escaped to the country, I wasn’t all that interested in it and found myself skimming these passages to get to more of the present. Was this backstory needed? Probably, otherwise it would have just been a plotless satire, but I didn’t find this aspect of the narrative that satisfying. It didn’t stop me enjoying the book immensely though.
But it’s not 5 stars because I ultimately didn’t feel that convinced by the ending. Is convinced the right word? It didn’t really make me feel anything but I got the sense that it was supposed to. I think the problem was that although I devoured Stella’s actions and thoughts, I didn’t actually sympathise with her enough (at all!) to care about why she left her old life behind. The letters that open the book felt like just another characteristic overreaction on her part. So when the plot started to hinge on the slow reveal of why she escaped to the country, I wasn’t all that interested in it and found myself skimming these passages to get to more of the present. Was this backstory needed? Probably, otherwise it would have just been a plotless satire, but I didn’t find this aspect of the narrative that satisfying. It didn’t stop me enjoying the book immensely though.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2022
an odd little farce of a book and comedy of manners and errors alike. marked down because it lacked much of a together plot and it took me a while to figure out what was satire and what was just overwrought writing but still enjoyable for its wicked caricatures of English rural life and Martin
February 27, 2023
DNF. I had been looking forward to reading this book but after struggling for 100 pages to find a way to like it, I gave up. I could not relate to the humor that dominated the plot and could feel no sympathy with any of the characters. On to the next book!
September 30, 2023
By far the most anxious, neurotic, paranoid, over-thinky character I’ve read from Cusk so far. The mystery of the sub plot seemed pointless and Cusk just needed to let her main character discover the history of this family through less dramatic ways.
August 22, 2024
I really enjoyed this
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