Since quitting work to look after his eight-year-old daughter, Alexa, Thomas Bradshaw has found solace and grace in his daily piano study. His pursuit of a more artistic way of life shocks and irritates his parents and in-laws. Why has he swapped roles with Tonie Swann, his intense, intellectual wife, who has accepted a demanding full-time job? How can this be good for Alexa?
Tonie is increasingly seduced away from domestic life by the harder, headier world of work, where long-forgotten memories of ambition are awakened. She soon finds herself outside their tight family circle, alive to previously unimaginable possibilities. Over the course of a year full of crisis and revelation, we follow the fortunes of Tonie, Thomas, and his brothers and their families: Howard, the successful, indulgent brother, and his gregarious wife, Claudia; and Leo, lacking in confidence and propped up by Susie, his sharp-tongued, heavy-drinking wife. At the head of the family, the aging Bradshaw parents descend on their children to question and undermine them.
The Bradshaw Variations reveals how our choices, our loves, and the family life we build will always be an echo—a variation—of a theme played out in our own childhood. This masterful and often shockingly funny novel, Rachel Cusk’s seventh, shows a prizewinning writer at the height of her powers.
The Bradshaw Variations: A Novel
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The Bradshaw family of suburban London is discontent. Thomas Bradshaw has taken a sabbatical from his job to learn to play the piano; his wife, Tonie, has become head of a university English department; their eight-year-old daughter, Alexa, watches as father and mother begin to suffocate under the failure of their expectations. The Bradshaws' brothers, sisters, parents, and in-laws, though sometimes faintly amusing, are no better off. Sister-in-law Claudia, a painter, never paints, blaming her nonproductivity on husband Howard, Thomas's older brother. Little brother Leo and his uneducated wife, Susie, drink too much—public knowledge because their children tattle on them—and the older generation of parents disapproves of them all. Cusk (Arlington Park) dissects her characters with a surgical precision, and all can be diagnosed with the same bourgeois malady: acute but indeterminate angst about the nature of existence. Cusk is a gifted writer who has a knack for razor-sharp characterizations, but the lack of plot—everyone is sad, little is done—is a serious detriment. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Cusk's searing, incisive novels have earned comparisons to Virginia Woolf's for their astute recreations of women's inner lives as they collide with society's expectations. Unfortunately, most critics concluded that Cusk's seventh novel does not live up to the sum of its parts. Despite vivid characters, crisp prose, and sharp psychological insights, the plot lacks tension, while subplots and minor characters drop from the narrative without explanation, and the Bradshaws seem strangely unconvincing. "Really," argues the Boston Globe, "how deeply can we care about a family whose defining characteristic is a lack of warmth toward one another?" Despite these shortcomings, Cusk's fans may pick up The Bradshaw Variations for her eloquence and wry humor. Others may wish to steer clear of her latest.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By reader 451
Format:Hardcover
The Bradshaw Variations pursues an analogy with piano, but a better parallel would be with painting. With portraiture, or still life. Told in the present, it is a succession of commentaries on the everyday. It revolves around the extended Bradshaw family, three couples plus their children and elderly parents, all living somewhere around London. Each and collectively, the characters follow their routines, tube-tested and analysed by Rachel Cusk in every detail.
A two-star rating is perhaps a little grudging. The Variations do contain the odd nugget. Yet many of its observations are either commonplace or, as one pauses, not that perceptive. `At times I just wanted to punch the air in a frenzy of delighted recognition,' says the critic's quote on the jacket. I didn't want to punch anything, except myself for having bought the book, after a while. Ms Cusk might have pursued the interesting premise that Thomas Bradshaw has decided to become a househusband, while his wife Tonie has returned to work. Thomas plays the piano. His sister-in-law complains she never has time to paint. Work, leisure, creativity, structure: Ms Cusk, as a writer, might have made interesting points about them, but the premise is not developed.
Yet the problem is not so much that the Variations' approach is not interesting, it is that they only stick to a single note. The ending is a cop-out, as if something racy somehow had to be found for the conclusion. Ms Cusk's style is agreeable, but the commentary runs out of breath. And what starts out as wistful ends up becoming dull. For Variations, this is not that varied.
A two-star rating is perhaps a little grudging. The Variations do contain the odd nugget. Yet many of its observations are either commonplace or, as one pauses, not that perceptive. `At times I just wanted to punch the air in a frenzy of delighted recognition,' says the critic's quote on the jacket. I didn't want to punch anything, except myself for having bought the book, after a while. Ms Cusk might have pursued the interesting premise that Thomas Bradshaw has decided to become a househusband, while his wife Tonie has returned to work. Thomas plays the piano. His sister-in-law complains she never has time to paint. Work, leisure, creativity, structure: Ms Cusk, as a writer, might have made interesting points about them, but the premise is not developed.
Yet the problem is not so much that the Variations' approach is not interesting, it is that they only stick to a single note. The ending is a cop-out, as if something racy somehow had to be found for the conclusion. Ms Cusk's style is agreeable, but the commentary runs out of breath. And what starts out as wistful ends up becoming dull. For Variations, this is not that varied.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Something of a disappointment from Rachel Cusk, whose books I usually admire. Every character in this book seems to be suffering the same malaise, and the author's style does as well, which makes for dull reading. The point of the novel seems to be that no one can really know another person, but isn't that what we, the readers, want from this sort of novel? To understand the characters? This is an almost plot-free novel, so the characters are really all we have. When the plot reaches its peak, it feels out of keeping with the rest of the book and tacked-on. There are some finely observed moments, and the writing is competent, but it all adds up to nothing memorable. Try this author's "Saving Agnes" instead.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Eden
Format:Paperback
This is the first book that I have read by Rachel Cusk but it won't be the last. She writes with great sensitivity and with a healthy dose of irony. Her question, "What is art" which begins more than one chapter, seems to have its rhetorical answer in the book's vignettes: showing that it's hard to touch when we seek it (Thomas, the husband piano player) or impossible to fit in (Claudia, the sister-in-law whose household duties crowd out her ability to go to her "studio"). What else is there in life besides plodding jobs with pensions at the end; or not wanting to work because the work environment is so suffocating? Just know never to get a Jack Russell dog who isn't trained.
The author's minute observances of behavior and interactions between people, two at a time, are so searing (the late cup of tea) that after reading a bunch of them, you want to ask yourself to take a breath, and to wonder how the writer lives within her OWN life! The withholding and grudging attitudes that reflect people's true natures, their being authentic to themselves stirs so much conflict and unhappiness, a non-meeting-ever-of the minds in relationships in which people are nonetheless interdependent is revealing, then depressing, then naturally occurring as one looks around in our own lives. Such is life. She's a great writer and it's worth reading for the illuminated descriptions and passages. I don't think I'd want to be friends with any of them. But that doesn't really matter.
The author's minute observances of behavior and interactions between people, two at a time, are so searing (the late cup of tea) that after reading a bunch of them, you want to ask yourself to take a breath, and to wonder how the writer lives within her OWN life! The withholding and grudging attitudes that reflect people's true natures, their being authentic to themselves stirs so much conflict and unhappiness, a non-meeting-ever-of the minds in relationships in which people are nonetheless interdependent is revealing, then depressing, then naturally occurring as one looks around in our own lives. Such is life. She's a great writer and it's worth reading for the illuminated descriptions and passages. I don't think I'd want to be friends with any of them. But that doesn't really matter.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
not bad
not bad, reminded me of tessa hadley, the end with sick child- her mother shagging seemed a bit punitive and melodramatic. Read more
Published 6 months ago by weeks
3.0 out of 5 stars
Of Mild to Moderate Interest
A series of interconnected vignettes dealing with the introspections and family relationships of a modern day British household along with many of their relatives, neighbors and... Read more
Published on October 21, 2010 by Cary B. Barad
4.0 out of 5 stars
A ruminative novel that strikes home
I have read many negative things about this book, and they are not off base. The plot is not much. The characters are rather elusive and not particularly memorable. Read more
Published on August 17, 2010 by Mark Town
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating piece of prose from a truly intelligent and interesting...
Tonie Swann and Thomas Bradshaw live in a lovely suburban land filled with pretty houses, pretty people, pretty cars, and the scent of success wafting about on the dense British... Read more
Published on July 19, 2010 by Bookreporter
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love Cusk, Love the Book
OK, Rachel Cusk can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. Each sentence she writes is so beautiful and her insights so precise that you keep wanting to grab the nearest person to... Read more
Published on July 2, 2010 by Gentle Reader
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