Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24954 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Jane Shilling, Evening Standard
'tender, haunting, grimly comic and infinintely disturbing'

Sunday Times
'funny and exhilaratingly unrepentant ... deliriously enjoyable'

Observer
'a novel about compromises and, in particular, the ones women make
when they become mothers ... an uncomfortable but essential book'

Customer Reviews

Speaks of nothing new
Cusk develops the characters well, but if it's a good plot you are looking for, then this book may well be one to avoid. Arlington Park puts forward an interesting, and in my opinion feminist, view of motherhood and the 'woman's lot' but really talks of nothing new and hasn't overly inspired me to read any other books by this author.

The Jury Is Out
Hmmm. I sped through Arlington Park in two sittings, but my opinion is divided.

First off, I'm not a mother, so I have no idea how accurate the portrayals of motherhood are. For what it's worth, though, I can see my own mother in one or two of the characters, so I'm assuming it is pretty close to the bone.

This is the first book I've read by Rachel Cusk, though she's a name I've been aware of for some time. If I'm perfectly honest, the reason I bought this book in the first place is because I needed a third to make up a 3 for 2 offer, and vaguely recognised her name. And the cover is pretty. Not the most intelligent reason to buy a book but hey ho. Sometimes I really am that shallow.

Rachel Cusk is a very good writer. She has an elegant turn of phrase, she has an eye for minute detail, and her prose is riddled with both anger and the futile nature of suburban domesticity and empathy with her exquisitely detailed characters. However, I couldn't help feeling like the unrelenting bleakness of Arlington Park was just a little too much. By the end of this fairly short book (240 pages) I felt somewhat like I had been walloped over the head with "motherhood is crap, motherhood is crap, motherhood is crap, motherhood is crap. and so are husbands." Perhaps this is my rose-tinted, no-children, view, but surely it can't all be that bad. There was no let up, there was no chink of light through the (carefully selected) curtains.

Rabid feminist as I am, this came across at times as a slightly clumsy feminist manifesto, that - conversely - gives even more grist to the mill of those who say that women only write about domestic matters.

I honestly think that Rachel Cusk is a massively talented writer, I just wish it had been a little more of a balanced story.

A depressing read
Having read the reviews (both on this site, on the book cover and in the press) I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately it did not live up to the hype. Yes, it's well written, and yes it's a comment on how we live now. However, it's such a 'glass half empty' book that it feels like a long slog to the end. If you want to read about a bunch of privileged women complaining bitterly about their lives then perhaps this book is for you. For me, it covers no new territory and has a serious sense of humour failure. What it does achieve, however, is to make you feel very glad that you are not in the well-heeled shoes of the women of Arlington Park.