Product Description

The Hanburys of Egypt Hill are the last word in bohemian living - or so they like to think. Their parties are famous, their relationships confusing, their bravado immense. To Michael, a young student arriving at the house on the hill for Caris Hanbury's eighteenth birthday party, they represent the prospect of relief from the strictures of conformity, and of an enfolding exuberance to which he feels irresistibly attracted. As an adult, Michael finds his own version of the Hanburys. The Alexanders are a wealthy, artistic family for whom moral abandon is almost a point of honour, and their fractious daughter Rebecca is now Michael's wife. While Rebecca struggles with questions of identity and self-expression, Michael becomes increasingly preoccupied with the idea of virtue. Why is his life with Rebecca and their son Hamish so destructive and tumultous? How has his existence become so tarnished, so without principle? When Michael is invited to spend a week with the Hanburys on Egypt Hill his illusions are startlingly confounded. The hill is being spoiled by development; the family are riven by jealousy and deceit; and as the days pass the rotten core of the Hanbury myth is gradually disclosed. "In The Fold" is a story of modern manners and past offences, of public morality and private property; and of how human beings can be undone by their yearning to belong.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77429 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 292 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Original writing is difficult to define but easy to spot. Award-winning author Rachel Cusk, one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, has a style that is uncluttered by modern whims. It’s crisp and clear but full of depth and nuance; dark and brooding but light and witty at the same time.

Michael lives in Bath with his skittish wife Rebecca and their strangely uncommunicative young son in a beautiful Georgian terraced house given to them by his in-laws--whose need to control other people’s lives bears more than a passing resemblance to the family of an old university chum, Adam Hanbury. When Adam’s larger-than-life, opinionated father develops prostrate cancer, Michael is persuaded to help with the lambing on the family’s remote farm, Egypt Hill, where a menagerie of animals, wives and ex-wives, children and grand-children collide rather than co-exist with one another.

While there is little "plot" to speak of, this is a book about the complex relationships of families and the emotional needs of modern living. The stark writing manages to lay bare the souls of the main characters, providing rare insights. Never preaching, nor condescending, Cusk allows her reader to appreciate the multiple layers of personality and the hit and miss nature of human interaction--some of which makes no sense but works against the odds, and others which slowly but surely destroy everything in their wake. While Cusk will never appeal to those looking for one dimensional storylines with cardboard characters, this beautifully, sparingly written gem is sure to delight the discerning reader. --Carey Green

Marie Claire
'This is Cusk at her very best.'

Daily Mail
'This deft, haunting work compels on every page.'

Customer Reviews

Fragility of identity
A study of the fragility of identity, perception and relationships, examining the darkness hidden beneath the most respectable of veneers, as people talk without managing to communicate to any great effect.

While this is certainly a well-written piece, there are times when the effort the author is making is all too apparent. Consequently, it seems a little laboured and the characters dissolve into little more than ciphers.

A breath of fresh air
I wasn't sure what to expect from this book (and I'm glad I hadn't read the other reviews before I started it - nothing like other peoples' opinions to colour your own ideas of something) but I found it a challenging and engaging read. Yes, 'nothing much happens' but I didn't feel that was the point - aren't there other books in which 'nothing much happens' but are still enjoyable?

I found Cusk's style of descriptive writing to be intelligent and well-phrased. She paints pictures with her words, so much so that I found it easy to imagine the settings in which the story takes place. I did find some of her analogies difficult to grasp (during one conversation, for example, Michael imagines a heart beating to symbolise a marriage and almost immediately moves onto the wiring of a plug), but it certainly made me think.

If you want to read a book which isn't necessarily 'a blockbuster' but is something you'll need to concentrate on, read this book. I'm certainly looking forward to reading Cusk's other novels now.

Not to everyone's taste but...
Despite the reviews, I feel that I have to support this book to some degree. Cusk is a very mannered writer and her tale of Michael and his disillusionment not only towards his marriage but also his perceptions of the idyllic country life of his friend's family can at times be a difficult one to read. The prose can be dense and, as one of the other reviewers noted, laboured. In some ways it is a mid-life crisis tale, and as the increasingly embittered Michael distances himself willingly from his wife he is also be distanced unwillingly from his youth by the passage of time. Michael is not a likeable character, but then again very few of the characters in this book are attractive at all. The misogyny present in the characterisations of most of the female characters is not at all pleasant. Michael's story is very similar to several of Anita Brookner's protagonists, whose retrospective meditations on their youth only reinforce their dissatisfaction with what they have achieved or failed to achieve as mature adults. Cusk, however, does not have Brookner's facility with words or her knack of Jamesian observation, and this is where In the Fold really falters. It might have been a interesting character study, if the writing was a little less contrived and anxious to be seen as serious literary fiction. Despite my comments, I did enjoy reading this book, as Michael and his fellow characters are some the most bitter and pathetic individuals I have ever encountered in contemporary fiction; but equally I found it a thoroughly depressing examination of 30 something angst that left me wondering just what Cusk wanted the reader to take away from this book.