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Arlington Park
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
15 posts | 11 read | 20 to read
Arlington Park, a modern-day English suburb, is a place devoted to the profitable ordinariness of life. Amidst its leafy avenues and comfortable houses, its residents live out the dubious accomplishments of civilisation: material prosperity, personal freedom, and moral indifference. For all that, Arlington Park is strikingly conventional. Men work, women look after children, and people generally do what's expected of them. Theirs is a world awash with contentment but empty of belief, and riven with strange anxieties. Set over the course of a single rainy day, the novel moves from one household to another, and through the passing hours conducts a deep examination of its characters' lives: of Juliet, enraged at the victory of men over women in family life; of Amanda, warding off thoughts of death with obsessive housework; of Solly, who confronts her own buried femininity in the person of her Italian lodger; of Maisie, despairing at the inevitability with which beauty is destroyed; and of Christine, whose troubled, hilarious spirit presides over Arlington Park and the way of life it represents. Rachel Cusk's sixth novel is her best yet. Full of compassion and wit, each page laden with truth, she writes about her characters' domestic lives, their private thoughts and fears with an intelligence and insight that will leave readers reeling.
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review
rachaich
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Pickpick

I liked this. Each chapter offered a perspective from one of the female inhabitants and we got to see how they interact, what they think and how they feel.

15 likes1 stack add
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rachaich
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Started this one first thing... the cover is such a pretty wallpaper then the sinister bird...

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Hannah_11
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Pickpick

Happy mind, Happy life 🙌🏻 #ArlingtonPark #happy #book #sunday #coffee

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quietlycuriouskate
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Pickpick

At a time when, like so many, I struggle to focus I read this in 24hrs. It could be a descendant of Mrs Dalloway. A handful of largely isolated women share a common feeling that marriage and motherhood have trapped and are draining the life out of them. They converge, with their husbands, on a dinner party hosted by one of them. It is sharp and bleak and skewers middle class family life but without malice towards the women themselves. I loved it!

readordierachel Oh, this sounds good! 4y
Tanisha_A Yep. What @readordierachel said! 4y
44 likes3 stack adds2 comments
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Minervasbutler
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Pickpick

This is less a novel than a series of interconnected episodes or brief sketches of a procession of 30-something women narrated over the course of a single day and set in the eponymous suburb. Nothing much happens and yet the writing is wonderfully descriptive and we are somehow made to care about these women who seem to have it all and yet are trapped in their roles of wives and mothers as firmly as any nineteenth century woman.

54 likes4 stack adds
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BookishTrish
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Pickpick

An absolutely scathing look at middle class motherhood.

59 likes2 stack adds
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BookishTrish
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Before we left for Saturna Island I was telling my husband about this book I‘d read when our oldest was a newborn and saying it‘s the book I wanted to bring away with us but I‘d given away our copy. Not an hour later I found a copy in the book sale at work - a discard from Saturna Library no less

Cinfhen That‘s awesome!!! 6y
Zelma That is really, really cool! 👍 6y
LeahBergen Cool! 6y
52 likes3 comments
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Lindy
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Pickpick

Glimpses into the lives of young British mothers over the course of a day, with their anxieties & vague despair simmering beneath the surface of suburban contentment, culminating in a drunken dinner party. Characters so vivid I expect to bump into them at the supermarket (but not that I'd want to). Cusk's writing style makes this novel shine: funny, fierce, piercing, unsentimental, supple and disturbing. #Audiobook narrated by Jilly Bond.

saresmoore Great review! I‘m intrigued. 6y
Lindy @saresmoore If you are in the mood for domestic fiction with an ensemble cast, I recommend this. 😊 6y
Lindy @saresmoore The play date scenario with a guest child colouring the white couch with a red marker... memorable.... 6y
saresmoore It sounds like the stuff of my nightmares. 6y
Lindy @saresmoore There's a lot of scary stuff in this novel; what's scary is that it is so realistic, especially the appalling things that go through people's heads and come out of their mouths. 6y
34 likes3 stack adds5 comments
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Lindy
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Christine didn't see how she was supposed to know if the chicken was done. She had given it a good innings. It was as roasted as the contents of a charter flight home from Tenerife. "Oh, I don't know," she said, slamming it back into the oven for another precautionary blast.

Lindy Photo is from Jamie Oliver—a far better cook than Christine. 6y
julesG 😂😂😂 6y
34 likes1 stack add2 comments
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Lindy
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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In one month's time she would have another baby. She thought perhaps she had changed her mind and would not be needing it now.

Laney1733 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣 7y
40 likes1 comment
blurb
Lindy
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Synchronicity: Amanda in Arlington Park has such a fear of messiness, she won't allow her son to play in their back garden unless it is perfectly dry & sunny outside. On the opening page of Down Among the Sticks and Bones, we meet the Wolcotts, who "are not the parenting kind." "Children were messes walking. They were trampled petunias & baseballs through picture windows & they had no place in the carefully ordered world the Walcotts inhabited."

SkeletonKey I can't wait for the third one in that McGuire series. Absolutely loved the second. 7y
Lindy @SkeletonKey Yes, I thought the 2nd one was much better than the first. 👍 7y
SkeletonKey @Lindy - Agreed, I'm glad I stuck with it after the first. 7y
See All 6 Comments
Lindy @SkeletonKey It was fortunate for me that my book club chose this. Actually, they chose the first one also, and that one was a big hit with most of the members, while I had niggling quibbles. 7y
SkeletonKey For me, the plot felt weak and then rushed. The one thing I did enjoy in the first was the characters so I'm excited to see her exploring them now. ☺️ 7y
Lindy @SkeletonKey I agree that characters are a strength. I also like the way she maintains a creepy atmosphere while slipping in amusing literary allusions. 7y
33 likes1 stack add6 comments
review
Taylor
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Panpan

I loved Cusk's novel Outline, so I thought I'd go back and read one of her previous titles. I'm glad I read it, because I like to see her development, but she definitely landed on something unique and special in her later work.

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Taylor
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk

I liked Outline so much I decided to go back and read one of Cusk's older titles.

Summed up, this book is basically about people married to spouses they hate.

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SarahRotenberry
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
Panpan

This book pretty much bored me. A couple of the characters were somewhat interesting (Solly, Juliet) but for the most part there wasn't much follow thru with any of them. The ladies were all to go to the same dinner party at the end of the day and I kept hoping something would happen to make me "get it". Nope. It wasn't for me, but I did finish it anyway.

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SarahRotenberry
Arlington Park | Rachel Cusk
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Surprised that there are no reviews, blurbs or quotes from Arlington Park so far. I guess I'll have to be the first 👍🏻