The Country Life: A Novel [Paperback]

Rachel Cusk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Stella Benson answers a classified ad for an au pair, arriving in a tiny Sussex village that's home to a family that is slightly larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them is low and remote. It soon becomes clear that Stella falls short of even the meager specifications her new role requires, most visibly in the area of "aptitude for the country life." But what drove her to leave her home, job, and life in London in the first place? Why has she severed all ties with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to discuss her past? And who, exactly, is Edward?

The Country Life is a rich and subtle novel about embarrassment, awkwardness, and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises. Rachel Cusk's widely praised novel is a captivating tale of one young woman's adventures in self-discovery.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Rachel Cusk's The Country Life, city mouse Stella abruptly abandons her London career and man for a job in Sussex. Her mission: to care for and transport young Martin, the disabled son of country mice Piers and Pamela Madden, owners of Franchise Farm. Alas, all is not ambrosia in Arcadia. For a start, the Maddens are, well, maddening. The paterfamilias sports "an expression of bright vacancy on his rosy face" whereas his wife evinces a more dramatic sort of derangement: "Pamela, I realized, spoke a language of energetic emergency, in which problems were approached as violently as they were escaped from." To make matters worse, not only does our heroine lack any background in her new field--she doesn't even know how to drive. Long before she's forced behind the wheel, however, Stella is out of her element. Nature, even the very air, seems against her. In one devastating tour de force, she falls asleep in the sun and is hideously burnt (but only on one side of her body!) and then suffers an indoor avian attack.

Fans of Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm will recognize more than a few nods to her classic in Rachel Cusk's hilarious and caustic third novel. For a start, the locals are unfailingly lugubrious, and every dog seems to have it in for our girl from the city. As for her young charge, Martin is either an emotional monster or a savior--though we readers might well opt for the former. The Country Life again and again displays Cusk's eye and ear for surreal comedy and social unpleasantry. Suffice it to say that your idea of a pleasant sojourn--or even a brief walk--in the country will never be the same. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Whitbread winner Cusk's first novel to appear in America is a touching, hilarious narrative by a modern-day Jane Eyre who renounces her life in London in the hope of finding an uncomplicated existence in the Sussex countryside. After a frenzied throwing out of "every vestige of love I had ever earned," unhappy, solitary Stella arrives in a tiny village to answer an advertisement for the job of caretaker to Martin Madden, the handicapped son of a rich farming family. Stella is prone to an "inner derangement": by the end of her second day among the nutty Maddens, she has broken out in hives, walked through a thorny hedge to avoid the front door, acquired a terrible sunburn and vomited. "It seemed incredible that so much could have gone wrong in so short a time," she laments. Cusk's hyperbolic descriptions of these and the many other calamities in Stella's everyday life demonstrate that her desire to "exist in a state of no complexity whatever" will prove to be impossible, especially since her surly charge, Martin, is, in her early estimation, an "evil dwarf." Cusk has a marvelous knack for revealing character in a few deft lines of dialogue; Stella herself is utterly lovable and her pain genuine. Later, when Stella and Martin have grown close, he tells her,"Everyone has to face things. It's the only way." Stella's particularly poignant attempt at facing her own inner oppression?and the surprising secrets in her past?will win Cusk many new readers, who will be eager to find her previous work, Saving Alice and The Temporary.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Picador; 1st edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312252803
• ISBN-13: 978-0312252809
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,236,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literacy in a post-literate society, December 2, 1999

By 

Elizabeth - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Country Life (Hardcover)

The Country Life is one of the best books I've read all year. I knew I was in for a treat after reading the first few pages in which Rachel Cusk deftly tips off readers about her narrator, Stella, by allowing us to read three rather unhinged letters of Stella's. (You can read those letters in the excerpt on this page to see for yourself.) Stella is the queen of poor judgement and a wonderfully unreliable narrator. Cusk relates the tale of Stella's numerous misjudgments, lapses, and bouts of rage with great skill--creating an uncomfortable and thoroughly foreign little world for her protagonist to blunder through. I recommend this book to anyone who likes British satire, high literacy, and a well-shaped and original plot. Why isn't this book more popular in the U.S.?

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I wince when I say I loved it, February 3, 2000

By 

"aliciarose" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Country Life: A Novel (Paperback)

. . . cause I've read some of the reviews below, and I see what they mean about Cusk's sort of blousy, self-conscious, detail-infuriating style--but so what. It's perfectly tuned to this character--it's her voice, after all--and her moronic escapades are wrought with such sympathy and interest that I found myself covering my mouth with my hand as I watched her blunder about, burst through hedgerows, sunburn herself into tears, lie about knowing how to drive and then doing it anyway. These things sound funny, but there's a disturbing edge to this novel that will make you nervous and intrigued by this character, and render you willing to follow her around the countryside, filled with barbs and doofs and demented delight. Give it a chance.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cusk Gets my Vote for 'Great Books' List, June 29, 1999

By 

"ami1204" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Country Life (Hardcover)

Once upon a time I was compelled to read the so-called 'Great Books' for my degree, and now I have read 'The Country Life' , and I tell you it is in the same class with the best of the old Greeks, with Racine and with Augustine and with Tolstoy, whoever! With a feeling like proclaiming about falling in love, I paraded 'The Country Life' around to my sister, to anyone whom I thought cared as I did that literature ought to be good and fresh and fun along with gut-wrenching and smart and new and yet, universal. My sister immediately pronounced it perfect for her reading group - Oprah's grim sob-fest shame-inducing books really do look like superficial, titillating tabloids in comparison. Finally, someone a bit more hip but no less perspicacious than Jane Austen has seen, and noted down, and made fine art out of the intensity of life's banal minutae, and understood that the horrors and soaring joys of that banality stand tall beside or even above the generic melodramas of war and tragedy as Things Which Are Impotant To Us All. How else does one define a great book, if not that it addresses such universal issues, that it finds a sameness inside any context? The context's pleasingness, freshness, and enjoyability are the final refinements that make this literature turn into art. I immediately sought further works of Ms Cusk and found them only at last on Amazon.com.uk and both (The Temporary, and Saving Agnes) have filled me with something like Doris Lessing's term 'We Feeling'. I especially recommend 'The Temporary'; as the sympathetic protagonist therein is male and achingly, superbly, portrayed by a female author. Ralph, I'm here for you, man, I totally understand your situation. Never in my life have I read a narrative that surprised me and pleased me so much by evincing my own worst and best imaginings - that life is meaningless and terrifying but at the same time accidentally also incredibly wonderful, like when you find an author like this, and she seemed to have held my hand while I read about my own feelings, and she painted them in such a lovely way, and she introduced me to disparate and likable characters who felt what I had thought was so abnormal, but the author made them so unilaterally real. Thank you, Rachel Cusk. Agnes Day (in 'Saving Agnes) has now replaced Pierre from 'War and Peace' as my hero. But Ralph comes in second; 'The Country Life' is a book that I will place on my bookshelf, in my sight, to comfort me with its very presence.