The Country Life, Rachel Cusk
The Country Life, Rachel Cusk
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The Country Life

Author: Rachel Cusk

Narrator: Jenny Sterlin

Unabridged: 13 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 08/22/2008

Synopsis

Winner of England's Whitbread Award for Saving Agnes and the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award, Rachel Cusk has won popular and critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. This young British author's beguiling novel is both poignant and hilarious. When Stella leaves London for a small village in Sussex, she hopes that the country life will be conducive to her journey toward self-discovery. She'll have no more insipid lover, dead end job, or controlling parents to endure. But, as an au pair for a dispiriting family, she's stalked by bad-tempered people, misfortune from weather and wildlife, and unwelcome suitors. Spunky and resourceful, she manages to keep a stiff upper lip, even when her darkest secret manages to catch up with her. Jenny Sterlin sparkles in her role as the irrepressible Stella. Even in the face of Stella's angst and touching vulnerability, you will find it impossible to stifle your laughter.

About Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and spent much of her childhood in Los Angeles before finishing her education at St Mary's Convent, Cambridge. She read English at New College, Oxford, and has travelled extensively in Spain and Central America. She is the author of six novels. The first, Saving Agnes (1993), won the Whitbread First Novel Award. A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001) is a personal exploration of motherhood. In The Lucky Ones (2003) she uses a series of five narratives, loosely linked by the experience of parenthood, to write of life's transformations, of what separates us from those we love and what binds us to those we no longer understand. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. Her latest novel is Outline (2014).

Reviews

Goodreads review by Trish on September 05, 2018

This novel is a fantastically successful parody of a Eighteenth Century novel in which a young woman encounters all sorts of terrors in her first solo foray into the wilds of the country in Sussex. I had the advantage of listening to this novel, brilliantly read by Jenny Sterlin, produced by Recorde......more

Goodreads review by julieta on January 10, 2022

I have to confess that this is the first book I have read by RC that I have not loved. This narrator is a little bit the opposite to her narrator in the outline trilogy , or more the transparency of one. The narrator in this novel is so present she is distracting. In her smartness she lets you see l......more

Goodreads review by Anne on November 22, 2011

The first time I read this book, I read it as an intelligent and witty farce. But now, some 14 years later, I see darkness beneath the humorous incidents. The first half of the book is still laugh-out-loud funny as Stella enters the odd world of the Madden family and generates a series of absurd mis......more

Goodreads review by Kieran on December 13, 2008

Probably one of the best books I've ever read. I absolutely loved Rachel's style of writing. The topic was somewhat banal and wasn't really that suspensful but I loved the English, syntax and style. I've probably re-read it about 3 times over the past 4 years. It takes a few pages to 'get into it' b......more

Goodreads review by Julie on July 16, 2008

An off-beat, slightly bizarre but laugh-out-loud lark of a novel. The protagonist, Stella, abandons her life in London to become a country au pair. Stella is at once the perpetrator and the victim of her own wacky circumstances; she reacts to life with a shriek and a shrug. There isn't much a plot,......more

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