Country Life ~ Rachel Cusk ~ 8/99 ~ Book Club Onli Export

Sarah! So good to see you, I have an ulterior motive in asking who's there!

Marylou!! Welcome welcome, Now We Are Three, but mercy, bless your heart, you read the Archived discussions to prepare? Now I'm intimidated! hahahahahaa

You just boldly post away, all we're about here are our own opinions anyway. There are certainly no right or wrong answers, and every opinion is valid. We used to have that posted somewhere, need to put it back.

Have you read the book yet?

I ask because the book has some objectionable stuff in it. If we have a quorum here which wants to proceed, we will. We've got Charlie and Barb out till the weekend. Shall we wait and see on Monday who's here and who isn't and decide then or plunge ahead or what do you say?

This book won no prizes tho the author surely has and it's very very interesting yet strange yet odd yet, well, offensive in parts, hilarious in others and I like it despite its faults, but if you need a G rating for a book this one won't pass muster.

So what say ye? Wait till Monday and see who all else joins us and decide Monday??

Marylou there you are in Alaska, that is so neato. You're our first actual participant in a discussion from Alaska, tho we've had Kathy Hill in the Book Exchange and Candi Scudero from Ketchikan, (Judy Laird's daughter) at our NYC and Chicago trips.

And Sarah is on the West Coast and I'm on the East Coast so we're Coast to Coast and Alaska already without one page discussed. Bi-coastal and proud of it!

THE COUNTRY LIFE seems to be about illusion and reality to me, she thought it would be one thing and it turned out to be....severely turned out to be another. I'm not sure what the author is saying but I lack two chapters and hope she makes it more clear by the end! hahahahahaaa, I can really relate to Stella, tho, I'm just like her, and howled over the sunburn episode, but so many questions remain it's hard to get a grip on it.

So if you're reading this and you can GET the book, and you can overlook some language and some very questionable parts mostly suggested, then join us by Monday or else Sarah and Marylou and I will have to chat entre nous. Maybe in French!

hahahahah

Ginny

I have put in a request for the book today, so I should be ready by Monday.

Are the questionable parts about sex? Violence? Pray tell, Ginny!! (I'm so glad you're back. I truly missed you.)

Marylou - it's wonderful to have you. I think everyone is intimidated at first - I sure was. This is such a welcoming group that it quickly falls away. Just know that we love having new people and come along for a ride with us!

Hello all. I got the book from the library and plan on reading it this weekend as we have a 5 1/2-6 hr. drive (each way) to my family reunion, and I don't have to drive. I'm not worried about any "objectionable parts" so I'm sure I'll be here on Monday or Tuesday. Glad to see you, Ginny. This may be the end of the road for me until next summer so I'm really looking forward to one more time with you.

Well, heckers, the "questionable parts" post I put up here is Gone With the Wind. Remember that commercial "parts is parts?" hahahahah Well we've got a Language Alert, and two possible Sexual Deviations Strongly Hinted At Alert.

It's a "today" kind of book, so this is your warning, because with our Prissy YAY PRISSY!! we've got our Quorum: so far the Gang of Four!

Anybody care to make it the Gang of FIVE? Join right in!

We can tear this thing apart!! I do have some questions, let's convene back here on Monday and get roaring on it, meanwhile I'll be putting up some URLs of interest and other stuff, if you find anything useful or interesting, please post it and up in the heading it goes.

It's summertime and the living is easy, even if the book selection is NOT! hahahahaha

Ginny

Ah, ha!! So, this is how you lure us into reading this book, Ginny. Promising lurid, "objectionable" stuff. Seriously, though, I'm a little stumped. I'm about halfway through the book and except for blasts of unchecked anger from the young boy, tales of weird goings-on of his brother when he was younger and some sinister hints about this brother and Pamela---well, have I missed something? Yet to come? Whatever it is, nothing offends anymore. Actually, nothing would be objectionable except from a writing standpoint and then, only if the behavior doesn't fit the characters. I'm not sure I have enough experience discussing books to know when an author is adding an edge just for shock---I can only weigh what I read against an internal meter of my experience of the world. From that perspective, nothing "offends" yet.

Oh, I forgot I had another thought. Duh.

I'm intrigued with this writer's style of not telling us everything. Sometimes we don't find out a critical part of Stella's history until another character, Martin, learns it. I'm thinking of something mid-book, about where I am in the reading, and it's important enough that I won't write it here in case some are not there yet. I was stunned. You'll be stunned. Also, the author, Rachel Cusk, hints at Stella feeling suicidal right at the first, or if not suicial, then a touch psychotic (losing touch with reality) when Stella's preparations to leave London reminds her of the "sensation of lightness I remembered from Rome, when it had been enough to convince me that I could jump from high up over the city where I stood and would not fall." Even though this is presented as a good feeling, the image is ambiguous.

This is followed by images that speak to Stella's level of anxiety. At the Buckley station, Mr. Madden's "car sat for some seconds, like an unexploded bomb." A similar image comes to her within minutes at the first tea she has with the Maddens when she sees Mr. Madden "sullen, staring down at his tea like an adolescent, his black hair flopping over his eyes, his large frame recumbent with that limpness slightly menacing in men, as if at any moment they could explode."

So, now I'm wondering where has she learned this anxiety; who back in London has exploded without warning?

And what a mixed bag on her state of well being, or lack of it. She thinks a lot about not being happy, even tells Martin that the search for happiness is the cause of unhappiness. YET, on page 110, she thinks, in almost an offhand way, "Being essentially happy with myself, my daydreams strive instead to transform my circumstances; usually prefering a more kindly age, offering ironcast certainties and a less virtiginous view of the future." Maybe this will become clearer as I read.

Betty G.

Now We are FIVE!! hhahahahaha

Well, Readerdoc is well past the Parts is Parts place and is sailing right along so I guess I can stop worrying- and WHAT a post! hey hey hey!

YAY!!

You never know, tho, I should have known our well read group would not start sniffing hysterically at every Parts Faux Pas!

Now We are Five, anybody care to make it a Gang of SIX??

This is FUN!

Ginny

AND I loved that post, AND I'm looking forward to thinking over the issues you raised there, isn't it strange, tho?

While waiting for the library to get me a copy of A country life, I picked up a John O'Hara book, and talk about raceee parts. Well the old master has them all. When he published this book in the 70's it was quite ahead of it's time and I am sure it was shocking and also good reading. I have gotten A Coutry Life, and I have read 10 pages thus far. It's slow reading but I am enjoying it. Although I am sure it will take me a little longer to get through, compared to John O'Hara's book. Giovanna

Hey Ginny

Just for your info. If you have lived in Alaska for a period of time you are always a Alaskan. I may not be living there now but part of my heart will always be there, and I live in hope to get to go back someday to live. Going to look for book.

MissC

Hey, hey HEY!! GANG OF SEVEN!!! Judy, you will be thrilled to discover it's about Sussex, England, where the Books is going next spring!

Giovanna, what an interesting recommendation, I'd like to try that one, haven't read O'Hara in years.

More anon, I thought Readerdoc's observations were right ON!!

This seems to be working quite well, so....Anyone care to make it a GANG OF EIGHT??

Ginny

Back late last night and we had a blast with all 5 grandboys ages 5 to 10 - Did not have as much time to read as I imagined so I'm only up to her settling in at the cottage. Already this sounds more like Black Humar then the hehehe hahaha I imagined. Still doing laundry and getting caught up but - will share this weekend.

GANG OF NINE!!! hahahaha, Welcome back, Barb, we'll begin in earnest on Monday, give everybody in this sultry heat time to catch up!

So glad you had a great time!

Nothing whatsoever on Rachel Cusk except that she appears to live in London, the book jacket says she recently won (not that you all can't read that! hahahahah)England's Somerset Maugham Award for young writers and has won

"The Whitbread Book Awards--First Novel Awards
Awarded to the first novel by a writer who has lived in Great Britain or Ireland for more than three years. "

So!!

She's a prize winner, but not for this novel, black humor indeed, I lack very few pages and I must admit I looked forward to the book each time, as I was, this time, interested in the characters.

How about making it a round GANG OF TEN? Or ELEVEN!! Eleven is a very lucky number, surpassed only by TWELVE!!

Ginny

Ginny & Co. - You all certainly made A COUNTRY LIFE sound intriguing. I found a review that compared it to COLD COMFORT FARM by Stella Gibbons. It turns out that …FARM was published in 1932 and won the ‘Femina Vie Heureuse’?? in 1933! All new to me - are you familiar with it? It’s described as a parody of Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence.

Didn’t want to read too many reviews of …LIFE as I plan to read the book as soon as I can get a copy and would like to start with a relatively clean slate, but noticed some descriptions - "surreal comedy, caustic, slyly subversive" - that sounded appealing.

Maybe I could join in after finishing it, or at least lurk, and make it a gang of 12-1/2. After THE HOURS & MRS. DALLOWAY, I found that I somehow (unreasonably, I’m sure) acquired a hearty dislike for not only the characters in both novels, but for Michael Cunningham and Virginia Woolf themselves. I was exhausted, "all done in", thought I’d better go back to minding my own business. Then I found just the right tonic - a good dose of satire in AMSTERDAM. Now I’m fully recovered and ready to get up and make a nuisance of myself once again.

Valerie!!! Gang of TEN! No half for you, you're a FULL TEN!

I didn't like any of them either, not the first one and actually almost hated Clarissa, sorry, but here in the Book Club Online we are about our own true reactions. So stupid, my reaction, but true.

OK, NOW, we're ready for our GANG OF 11 or our GANG of 12!!! We're waiting for you!! Join right in!

Am just in from a family reunion in Georgia (actually a birthday cum gathering,) very nice indeed, spent all the day there so bright and early tomorrow let's look at the first 1/3rd of the book and at some of the issues Readerdoc has raised. I do have COLD COMFORT FARM, the book and the movie but have not looked at either, have any of you??

See ya tommorrow, early, I hope!

Ginny

Well a grand good morning to you all and welcome to the first day of what I know will be an exciting discussion of a very strange book: THE COUNTRY LIFE by Rachel Cusk.

I am glad we got to read this thing, as she's apparently THE up and coming author of the times, but wasn't it strange and unusual and it's going to take all of us to figure out WHAT she said?

Now don't be shy here, we can't know what you're thinking if you don't SAY what you're thnking and YOUR opinion is just as good as anybody elses, certainly better than mine, as I'm in the dark totally.

I've put up a modest, I hope, reading schedule in the heading? About 100 pages per week, I hope that's not too daunting, if so, holler!

I attended a writing workshop a long time ago with the Poet Laureate of South Carolina who told us the idea in a book is to sort of say, "I'm going off for a grand adventure, you come, too!"

Certainly this book promises the same. Sort of like the Adrienne Arpel (sp?) (or was it Arpege? I believe it was Arpege) ads used to be: "Promise her anything, but give her Arpege?" Remember those??

The author starts out with a quote from Vergil's Georgics and I must admit I was all a twitter: o good, clasical references, depth, oh good. But then.....but then.....

Her foreward speaks of gratitude to those who showed her "the country life," and there are innumerable references in the book to the DIFFERENCES between "The Country Life" and the.....?? TOWN LIFE?? The what life?

But early on we are confused? There appear to be some mysteries afoot? On page 2 we have letters to her parents?? Did you stop over that one on page 3, for Pete's sake?

"I suppose if we all lived our lives only to avoid worrying our parents nothing much would ever be achieved...I think it would be better for me if we didn't see each other any more...Please don't try to find me."

OK, here, especially if you have children, did you pause? That one knocked me out of my chair? WHAT?? WHAT?? What's going on? And who is Edward who has apparently also been knocked for a loop, she's not there when he comes home and he shouldn't try to find her? Hello??

Readerdoc was right, this author is very...what? unusual in the way she chooses to reveal the character. We feel that we know every thought she has, yet, if you've finished the book, and I won't reveal anything if you haven't, but you know it's WAY WAY to the end before we find out, in fact, WHO Edward is, and WHY he's in the state he's in? And we don't find it out from her, either.

So what kind of strange world is this, then? What sort of narration, what new technique. Is it effective? Does it intrigue? Did you look forward to picking up the book? Do the characters endear themselves?

What on earth was that business about the Father writing Stella in the guise of the family dog Bounder? What kind of people ARE these?

Do you pity Stella for her life which apparently heretofore has been one of stand-offish emotions??

Readerdoc asked what could bring on the anxieties she exhibits, the irrational fears that crowd her mind at every opportunity? I think if the only way your father could write you was to pretend to be the family dog, you might have a problem with honest face to face relationships? Maybe??

Here's a quote for today: Will try to find one per day:

"We are all, in our journey through life, navigating toward some special, dreamed-of place; and if for some reason we are thrown off course, or the place itself, once reached, is not what we hoped for, then we must strike out at whatever risk to set things right."

What does this mean? What does SHE think "The Country Life" is? What do YOU think it means and is? Do you think it's different from your life, and if so, how??

Oh my goodness and then there are all those dreams to try to interpret!! So much to say, let's hear from YOU!!

Ginny

Ginny - still waiting for my copy of the book from the library, but you've certainly piqued my interest! I'll be lurking for a few more days.

Yes, what does this all mean!

I've only read to page 105 and I'm trying to decide if this is the sarcastic and witty dialogue often used by abused folks from dysfunctional families or if we are slowly examining the mind and actions of someone building to a climax that is so off the wall, that all of this sets the stage for the dichotomy of the climax.

When the pigeon hit the wall and there was no more reference to that happening I really thought that I better get out my book on symbolism and see what I could figure out.

Feathers: Truth, which must rise; lightness; dryness; the heavens, flight to other realms; the soul; the element of wind and air.

All Birds: have knowledge (the little bird told me) Transcendent and instinctual knowledge and magic power. Pigeon: Longevity; fidelity; Spring; lasciviousness.

Death: the unseen aspect of life; the dead are all-seeing. Death to earthly life precedes spiritual rebirth.

Garden: Paradise; the Fields of the Blessed; the 'Better Country'; the abode of the soul; The Gardener is the Creator and in the Center of the garden grows the life-giving Tree, fruit, flower, the reward of him who finds the center. Enclosed gardens are the feminine, protective principle, they also represent virginity.

Door: Hope; opportunity; opening; passage from one state of world to another; entrance to new life; initiation; the open door is both opportunity and liberation.

Sun: the supreme cosmic power; the all-seeing divinity and its power; the center of being and of intuitive knowledge; "the intelligence of the world'; enlightenment; the eye of the world and the eye of the day; the unconquered; glory; splendor; justice; royalty; the Universal Father.

OK so, truth (feathers) scatter; Longevity, fidelity, Spring, lasciviousness (pigeon) crashes to death with the promise of rebirth; She becomes sick in the Garden of Paradise, the 'Better Country' and on her virginity. She is lost and confused finding hope and opportunity (doors) and the Universal Father and intuitive knowledge burns her.

No description of windows in Coopers book on symbolism but hers is small that looks on the big house where as Martin's has two and they are large. Her limited view and his expansive view on to their world.

So far the read is like looking through that small window and through the eyes of Stella. I'm not seeing the broad picture, only glimpses of what Stella directs us to. Was she or not married to Edward? I'm not seeing her as the adventurous independent woman of the nineties since, she was living in her parents property, not able to drive and now dependent on her employer for room and board.

This confusion with doors must be an English comedy thing that is going over my head. I remember an episode of the Brit. Comedy "As Time Goes By"; Lionel places a plaster (bandaide) above the bath door, when they are visiting Steven and Penny, so that he doesn't mistake another door during the night. Stella also climbs through the hedge, a barrier to the road, her liberation toward opportunity. She also finds and reads the Runaway Bride by an author with her name. Was she about to marry and ran off?

To 'hate' Pamela because of her looks, and ways also, her less then professional handling of their business relationship seems extreme to me. At first I thought, how can Stella not come right out and say what her problems are and then I remembered being a young woman in an adult world trying to look like I fit and I remember also not asking or letting others know when I wasn't prepared.

I found this in another book I was reading and wonder if it would fit the use of sexuality in 'The Country Life' - "Discover sexuality as a metaphor for imaginative experience."

I really need to read further to figure out what is going on!

Good heavens, Barbara, for somebody who has only read 105 pages, you sure picked a lot up there that I completely missed, good GRIEF!!

The dying pigeon with the promise of REBIRTH, how about that one, Readerdoc?? Remind you of anything else?

THE RUNAWAY BRIDE? My o my, how clever some of these authors are in their writings. Missed that one entirely, too.

Now I can understand her hating (well, not HATING) Pamela, Pamela seems to have everything she doesn't and is what she aspires to be, doesn't she mentally imagine Pam out of the picture and her (Stella: means STAR, you know)! hahahahaaaa oh boy loaded with stuff I didn't see at all)....marrying the Lord of the Manor there.

Sarah, apparently this thing is not as simple as I thought!

So those of you who have it so far: does it interest? Does it intrigue? Inquiring minds want to know!

Ginny

Twinkle, Twinkle, little Star - Stella sure is not shinning brightly - she seems to be half hidden behind some clouds - I'm guessing, hoping this story line clears up and we learn what Stella is running from and why she is sick in paradise.

Did it again. I have only read 60 pages, thus far, but I am finding it quite enjoyable. I also wondered what she was running away from, and why she is so angry with her parents. I am sure we will find out, eventually. So you think she would like to be mistress of the manor. I only met the young charge, who she has been hired to look after, and I am not sure if I was a young girl, that I would like to have the full responsibility of that youngster. The book is far more interesting because I can share my views with all of you.

Giovanna, I agree, and was startled to find he was actually 17 years old! Surely a male companion would be more suitable?

Also I could not, for the life of me, get straight the description of Martin, could you all? I have sort of a Bart Simpson visualized with half his head cut away? I can't get the idea of it.

Likewise, I don't understand the Stel-la business, Martin is not retarded, is he?

Here's a good quote for today, "It has been my experience that people of a drematically diferent physical 'type' to oneself are harder to get along with than those whose flesh one's own instinctively 'recognizes.'"

Do you find this to be true? Is there any physical "type" of person who causes you to feel uncomfortable? How about extreme beauty? How do you react to that?

Does the song, "Don't want no short people round me," apply to you?

How about short men? Is it true what they say about them?

Ginny

And for heaven's sake what on earth is the business with her two brothers? On page 8? Why is that in the book, it never is referred to again that I can see? What am I missing here?

Ginny (PS: in an aside, I do think the covers of the book, not the paper cover but the actual book covers are very pretty, yellow and green. Agrarian).

Ginny - I thought the brother thing was painting a picture of this sister still greiving and in the anger stage. Angery that her parents did not sue the school, angery that spear throwing was still an acceptable activity today, angery that her other brother did not melt down with her and share their loss. A woman stuck in her pain and carrying her anger into other areas of her life, a woman that cannot make others do what she thinks is appropriate and therefore, feels abandoned. She acts like she needs to own that feeling of abandonment and therefore abandons everyone else as a way to protect her pain.

She was thrown off course and now after some time of adjusting to her loss she is trying to heal herself in a 'better country'. (If a garden is a 'better country' then the country could represent a large garden)

Barbara - I agree that Stella is angry with her parents. However, I get the impression that she does not realize it at this point in the book.

Her parents aspire to a higher social position, and send the children to boarding school (a hellish place) as part of the plan. It sounds like all the children are compliant with their parents' wishes. The oldest son returns home happy, but he has lost something vital and precious in the process. The younger son strives to overcome his hearing disability, but he is killed in an act of carelessness on the part of the school. Stella is outraged that her parents' awe of the school prevents them from questioning his death. However, Stella does not confront her parents about this. Instead, she does well-enough in school to go on to college. Then she allows her parents to buy her a flat in London, where she is working as a professional.

Then some event happens that must be the last straw for Stella. She reacts by rejecting everything that her parents value. She quits her prestigious job in London, and takes a low-station position in the country. She writes that awful letter to her parents and destroys all evidence she had ever existed. As a parent, receiving that letter would have caused me the most unbearable pain. But Stella said that the certain outcome of the move would be her parents' fury. Does this mean that Stella's parents desire to control was more powerful than their love for Stella?

Poor Stella! Running as fast as she can right into a situation she is totally unprepared for. The wrong clothes, no towels, staying lost in the big house...what else can go wrong? So much!

She is very judgemental. She doesn't like Pamela based on superficial reasons. Later she is equally quick to pronounce judgement on the other members of the family.

But then, what a family! Mr Madden slinks around doing chores, part hired hand, part maid. Martin speaks to his parents in the most appalling manner and noone seems to think much of it. Pamela's personality changes towards Stella are hard to keep up with--friendly one minute, harsh and scolding the next.

Stella walks to the village, tracks in tar from the road, ruining the carpet, and simply rearranges the furniture. A bird flies into the house and soils the furniture--oh well, just go to bed and worry about it in the morning. Later she mops up the kitchen floor with all of Pamela's dish towels and takes them home, putting them in an armchair, wet. Towards the end she really gets into the sauce, literally. Don't want to give anything away to those of you reading more slowly.

I feel sorry for Stella. She has absolutly no idea what she is getting herself into. I don't think she could have chosen a stranger family to get involved with. I stayed confused by them myself. Something pretty bad would have had to happen to drive her to this brink.

She is also living very much in some sort of fantasy. At the slightest provacation she falls into it. Part of her inability to function is caused by her hallucinations.

I kept waiting for some answers to the Madden's bizarre behavior. I'm hoping someone can give me some insights there.

Prissy: I finished the book and am still waiting for an explanation of the Maddens and their very bizarre behavior, and I'm so glad to have this group to chat with about it, as at the moment I don't see any explanation.

I agree with you that I sympathize with Stella, in fact, empathize with her a lot. It seems she's off on a romantic adventure right out of a romance novel: au pair to the son of the manor, life in the COUNTRY and all she thinks that entails, but mercy, what of the shocks, the non food, the non money the towels, as you mention, she's almost in a dream like state. So many shocks to the system, IS "country life" really like this or is, this, perhaps, Stella's own aproach to everything?

And you, too, like Marylou, think some drastic thing happened to cause her abrupt departure. I sure hope one of you sharp eyed readers find it, am totally in the dark.

I agree with Marylou that she doesn't realize yet how angry she really is. I thought this was fascinating? "Does this mean that Stella's parents desire to control was more powerful than their love for Stella? "

Didn't you find the parents were conveniently done away with early on? Did you see any presence there in the rest of the book? Once again the author teases us with the most important details while immersing us in the day to day traumas.

I love the author's use of vocabulary. For instance, on the drive with the totally bizarre Mr. Madden, he barely avoids a tractor and she cries out, "'I'm fine,' I shrilled." We can put ourselves in her place if you've ever been driven in England, even to the two honks before rounding a treacherous corner.

I love her turns of phrase, her use of unusual language "exiguous," for instance. I always prize a book which sends me to the dictionary.The furniture stands about in "elegant poses," and the author's casual throwing in of startling judgment calls is staggering, " personal change, I now know, is a long and slow process of attirtion, its man meticulous blows invisible to the naked eye." (page 34)....

And then, what are we to make of this one, which I just noticed following that quote, "There was, of course, a darker destiny written within my metaphor if one cared to look for it; for at the end of it all, these ancient tides would remain unchanged, while I would be diminished."

WOW.

(page 35).

This seems to add to the ominous foreshadowing, but of WHAT?

Then, as Marylou has noted, we have her singular unpreparedness. Shaking off naked, no towels. But WHO on earth would think to supply one's own towels when going to LIVE in a home?

And how about this one, her clothes are all wrong (I think it's here that I really began to bond with her, mine always are). "I am ofen cripled by dislike of my own clothes." (page 37)

Boy now THERE'S a statement, especially when you consider WHY we dress the way we do?

What is she SAYING here about herself?

And Barb, loved this one: " a woman that cannot make others do what she thinks is appropriate and therefore, feels abandoned. She acts like she needs to own that feeling of abandonment and therefore abandons everyone else as a way to protect her pain."

Boy o boy o boy, have I seen some examples of that one. Wonder why people have a need to make everybody else do things THEIR way? Anyway, tho, IS she abandoning everyone?

She abandons Edward, her boss and her family and....but sets off to embrace a new set of people??

There is a lot of myth surrounding the Country Life, especially in England where huge country houses used to provide the wealthy with amusement, and probably still do. "A House in the Country" means different things to different people, but most everybody thinks of it as pleasant. I think Stella was romantically throwing herself into this new milieu in hopes of tasting some of those reputed pleasures without regard to what her situation might actually be. After all, the ad did say "aptitude for the country life" (whatever THAT is, what do YOU think it meant)?? And "some menial work." That's NEVER a good sign.

And we have to ask what she's saying about what must be considered the Upper Class of England, too??

So the first evening is not a success and Stella's new employer, strangely refuses to tell her WHAT, in fact, her duties are, even chiding her for asking, implying she has made a "double burden." Then we have the strange burning and white ridges on her arms, what on earth is that??

Then there are doors which open in secret panels, and Mr. Madden's exasperation for her asking, what kind of people ARE these?

Sooo she sets out for a walk, and here we have several disturbing images which the author sets up, don't you find all these jarring images (Martin's tongue, calling his Mother a Cow, Pamela's saying it's a madhouse) are combining to produce a strange atmosphere?

At this point I was totally hooked, totally on Stella's side as I often feel powerless and stupid when things and people don't turn out like I thought they would.

I was ready to see her avenge. How about you, did you pick the book back up with eagerness?

How do you characterize the writing so far?

Ginny

Some details are haunting me. Can't find the exact quote, but essentially, Stella thought, "I've been writing this letter since I was a child," speaking of the separation letter to her parents. SO, she has nurtured this fantasy for a very long time---that of getting away from her parents. For many young people (and, for that matter, people of any age), it is difficult to launch a project of asserting oneself, finding a voice. For Stella, the dramatic break may have seemed easier. Edward may be just part of the parental package, not someone she would have selected if she'd become a self outside her parents.

Just this part, the fantasy of getting away, starting fresh, going "to the country"---boy, is this a universal and familiar longing. I am actually IN the country, a tiny coastal town, after having lived in metropolitan areas all my life. I moved to Oregon without knowing even one person here. I think Stella has dreamed about and done what many people long to do---in one form or another. It can be a dangerous dream for some---the lure of greener grass that will disappoint, the current trend for families to move from the "city" to a simpler way of life in "the country," only to trade one set of challenges for another. For others, of course, the dream fits.

Has anyone noticed that on the first day Stella thinks about unpacking her suitcase to hang her clothes up, then decides to do it later. But she doesn't. She lives out of her suitcase.

She is such a child in keeping secret her basic needs--towels, food, even wanting to use the pool. Reminds me of an exciting over-the-weekend visit to an older cousin who I idolized---I was junior high age. She was a freshman in college at home on summer vacation. I was too shy to tell anyone that there was no soap in the guest bathroom. I remember scrubbing and scrubbing, trying to compensate. Of course, at home, you never knew what would get you "in trouble," so we learned to stay quiet. But imagine Stella not feeling OK about asking for food!! If this is how she lived her life in London, no wonder she dreamed of escaping. Another thought---her young brother didn't feel able to acknowledge his needs either, his hearing impairment. What a family.

I am really moved by Stella's instant ease with Martin. From having worked with very young men with new spinal cord injuries and growing chips on shoulders, I can tell you it is remarkable that whatever awkwardness she or Martin felt melted away with surprising speed. The "norm" as I see it for a woman of her age would be general ease with adults her age and older and with people without mobility impairment---and some expected un-ease and get-to-know-you time for genuine trust to develop with someone with mobility limitations. Stella and Martin didn't need extra time. Maybe Stella identifies with him---and maybe he with her. Has she felt this "difference," this distance from the world herself? Also, even though she was hired to care for him, there are instances when the roles reverse.

You see, I'm having as much trouble with this weirdo family and story as everyone else is---things seem so odd and skewed---except for this easy, easy connection that happens with Martin and Stella. I almost feel like I am learning about Stella through Martin and about Martin through Stella. How they view and are viewed by family/society.

Well, shoot, Ginny, I want the end of the book to clear things up and you say it doesn't? Sounds like life.

I don't think Stella has any redeeming qualities. Several times I have become so exasperated with her. They say you dislike the bad traits of someone who usual has your own bad traits. But, a simple task of going to the store to buy something to eat, it seems intimidated her. Fortunately, the author Rachel Cusk, has quite a way with words, and is keeping me interested to see whate else Stella can bumble her way through. I am only up to page 70 something. So I still have a way to go. But I am very hopeful that I will finally find a message here.

readerdoc - I liked what you said about the universal longing to start fresh.

I got the impression that Stella had very few, if any, friends in London. We often hear of city dwellers feeling very isolated and lonely while living in a mass of humanity. I, too, used to live in the city and had a small circle of friends. But now I live on an isolated island in Alaska and have a large number of friends and acquaintances. I discovered that our remoteness causes us to turn our attention more fully to our neighbors. Our close proximity and repeated contacts allow us to learn a lot about each other. We become deeply attached to our friends and neighbors and accept their faults along with their virtues.

I'm wondering if Stella is experiencing this discovery process. Her initial reaction to meeting new people is to make an instant critical judgment. How different her reaction is during the last scene of the book. (I won't be more specific in case others are still reading.) Maybe the author purposely created the Maddens as flawed individuals so that Stella could learn to appreciate the good in people.

What was the purpose of the strange night rashes? That one totally perplexes me.

Ginny--I completely forgot about the weird, white "rash" she kept getting in the bed. What was that?

readerdoc--great observation about Stella's and Martin's role reversal. I've finished the book and it becomes even more so toward the end.

What was Pamela's problem? She started off treating Stella as a friend, jumping quickly to outrage that Stella might not understand her place and role in the household,"I really didn't expect to have to mollycoddle you and lead you by the hand every minute of the day...If you don't think you're going to be up to it...then you'd better tell me now rather than later."(49) Then later, sitting by the pool, most likely knowing how her voice would carry, talking to a friend about Stella in fairly derogatory tones. She treats her husband like the hired help. Her relationship with her children is unusual, to say the least. Is there something incestuous going on between her and Toby? She treats Martin like a much younger child, possibly because of his disability, always ruffling his hair but never having a real conversation with him (almost as if he's not really there). Caroline is spoiled and Pamela continues indulging her.

What a coincidence that Millie's boyfriend know Edward! Is Stella in the same class as the Maddens after all?

Thank goodness she has Martin (after their rocky start). I loved the drive to the centre, what a driving lesson! And the cut off pants at supper!

And then, even after the fiasco at the end, Pamela is "sorry to lose her"(330). It seemed to me that they might ask her to stay or just leave things as they stand with her continued employment.

You all have seen so much in these few pages, I'm actually stunned.

Readerdoc, I missed that quick identification with Martin, don't have the background to notice that: thanks for telling us about the norm. I can't understand why Martin has been portrayed as he has, anyway, by the way? Couldn't there have been a young child for her to govern instead? Why Martin and his deformity? The whole story is, as you say, skewed.

I can also relate, tho, to the urge to go for THE COUNTRY LIFE! I also spent most of my youth dreaming of living on a farm in the country. My grandmother used to encourage me with letters of when we, ( she and I), would have our own farm. My mother thought perhaps she should not have done that, but she did, and set up a lifelong learning for same.

And so that's how we came to live where we've lived now for 20 years, wouldn't trade it for the world, yet, it, too, was a considerable shock to the system, not quite as bad as Stella's tho.

Still it's not what everybody seems to think it is?

Readerdoc, that was so touching, you and no soap and no mention of same, I can relate to that, in spades.

In many ways, Stella seems an exaggeration of our worst fears.

Giovanna mentions her inabilty to even go to the store to buy food. You know when you think of that, that's a pretty elemental thing, you need to eat. Why isn't food supplied? Why doesn't she ASK?? And yet, Stella can't seem to manage. Having lied about being able to drive, she sets out on foot. These passages, starting when she sets OFF to walk to town, had me in hysterics. It's farther than she thought, she gets sunburned to the point that she has to walk backwards, (tears down face at this point) she gets a strange burn on face, she tracks tar into the house, I mean, it goes on and on, and again, on.

Now what is our reaction to this, and what does it mean? Giovanna is irritated and impatient with her. Ginny identifies totally with her, having set out one bright day in Cornwall and finally arrived at Port Isaac 4 hours later half dead, having lost two companions whom she was sure had fallen off the cliffside. (They had stopped at a stream and plunged in, like Caesar, out of the heat!)....This kind of thing IS my life. Still Stella, like most of us, presses on. Almost like wading in water too deep, like a nightmare, in slow motion.

What did the rest of you think of this passage? I loved her description of her face: a pattern "which would not look amiss on a national flag."

Yet all the time she was walking I wanted to scream at her to turn around, to go back, to get out of the sun.

What about this revelation on page 95?? "I arrived at the conclusion that Pamela was not the self-possessed and frightening person she seemed...Having discovered Pamela's weakness, I was in a sense electing to carry it, and I had come to the country with the express purpose of avoiding burdens of this type."

I find that fascinating. Does the revelation of weakness in another automatically mean your assumption of it? What a strange book this is. I think Cusk has taken me for a ride with her risible adventures, and I'm missing what she's actually saying, it's a queer blend when you look at it. Almost like a comedian, and we all know they are sad clowns under the facade.

Prissy, and Marylou, I have no idea what that white rash is or why she's visited with it, no clue!! I couldn't think what kind of bed bug or flea or what on earth!! And it comes and goes? Can it be nerves? Have any of you ever seen something like it? I have not??

Marylou, that's a wonderful description of life on an island in Alaska, what interesting people we have here in our Books, I loved reading that.

How do you and Prissy and Readerdoc and Barb feel about Stella's apparent klutziness? Did you empathize with her or lose patience with her or what was your honest reaction to that??

And that was interesting in Giovanna's statement that she didn't have any redeeming qualities. That's astute, too. I spent the entire book noting each comparison between what she THOUGHT life in the "Country" would be as compared with what it actually was, but the entire thing fell flat, I thought, or died with no purpose.

I didn't look at her redeeming qualities. For that matter, what of the other characters in the book? As Prissy says, what on EARTH is up with Pamela, not exactly a constant there, is there any hint of WHY she keeps changing?

Is Martin her child? Is Martin Mr. Madden's child also?

Is the house Pamela's and Mr. Madden married into it? That would explain why she treats him like she does. Why, by the way, do they need an au pair at all? Martin seems perfectly capable of tending to himself??

What kind of young person in 1999 does not know how to drive a car? how possible is that, actually, now?

Do you actualy think there was any incest? I don't. I agree that Stella is over-critical of the Maddens, but they sure are strange. I mean, if YOU were in the same situation, what would YOU think?

How about the "C" word that Stella just bursts out with? The stunned silence, the pretending not to have heard it. I tell you, that kind of thing is bad to read about as I myself, right after reading it, in an elevator, had the most awful phrases struggle about in my mind in sort of sympathetic harmony to Stella's having burst out with it, but I did refrain from saying the name I was thinking (not the c word) out loud. What did that outburst mean? Was it to serve notice that Stella, after all, was not to be trifled with? That she IS, actually, more fierce than she appears?? IS she, then, passive agressive or WHAT?

I thought this was a great statement from Readerdoc, too: " I almost feel like I am learning about Stella through Martin and about Martin through Stella. How they view and are viewed by family/society. " That's great stuff. How do we learn about the other characters? Is this only something shared by Stella and Martin?

You know what? How would it be if we each chose a character to WATCH. And we kept a close look on our character as to what others thought or what that character revealed about himself? What do you think?? Any takers?

But before that, what do you say so far here in the first 97 pages? Are the characters realistically portrayed? Which is the most realistic and which the least? Why??

Perhaps I missed the purpose of the book, I know one thing, none of YOU will miss it, and without you I would have just laughed it off!

Ginny

Stella reminds me of a teenager all arms and legs and insecurities and trying to look the part and fit in and wondering what it's all about since what you are taught that is logical and worthy behavior doen't work. You know there is a secret out there that they have kept from you as a child but, to desipher it because, no one seems to be giving you a clue. No one told you there was no towels or a house of your own without food.

Then of course from the Maddens point of view it probably makes perfect sense. An inherited country house means that not many generations ago work was silently completed by many who lived in cottages on the property and everyone knew their way around, the rules as well as the tasks to be performed.

And finally children do not come with instructions but, the average child can be attended with a group of historical half remembered actions. But no where are there instructions for a child needing extra or special attention. Pamala reminds me of Pooh Bear - Oh bother, for this bear with such a small brain. But come to my house when your tummy is rumbly and bring some honey. We bears like honey.

All this going on is like a 3 ring circus and reminds me of the artists of Britian in the 30s that had full and misshapened characters ablaze in color all over the canvas. Chickens on heads and crying babies looking like the are doing back dives out of bulky arms and rotound flowery aproned woman. I'm not so much laughing as much as, what is going to happen next and can one more thing be juggled in this overly painted canvas of a story with no apparent understanding what its all about.

Having been a klutz in denial all my life I'm am still amazed when things happen. My grown kids are always asking about this and that black and blue or scratch and for the life of me I cannot even remember doing it but they are very consistent. I'm always showering and saying to myself as I wash, Ohhh now how did I do that? I am always hipping and hopping to temperarily stop some discomfort without actually taking time to own the source of the discomfort and make plans not to repeat what ever caused it, as if my body is just in the way of me. So walking backwards to get home (the important thing) and relieve the discomfort on the way - sure I would do something dumb like that.

Barbara, that was marvelous. A Klutz in Denial. I was thinking this morning before I got up out of bed, Denial. Stella is in big denial. As that radio psychologist says, she's Cleopatra, the Queen of Denial.

I was struck by her doing something and then "hoping" it away, hoping that it wouldn't be there or it would be different or it all would go away and magically be restored to what she could deal with. Not so much in this section but in the one we start tomorrow, it's very apparent. A wistful kind of hoping thru life. I just can't get a HOLD on this character or understand her except that I do things like you and like her, very much in character, but NOT to the extent that Stella takes it.

One would think after 17 years that Pamela could cope a bit more?

I loved your thought about a child knowing there was a "secret" world out there but not one to which the child had the key, no one had told the child how to deal with it. That's absolutely marvelous. That sense of alienation, we can see it in Stella and I wonder how many of us have felt it at one time or another?

Is it common to feel that way? Are there any situations into which you could be thrust that would cause you to feel that way?

How about public speaking? Would that throw you off your stride, make you feel a bit....what's the word, out of the loop?

Cusk has presented us here with a character who does not fit in, who can't cope yet, but I'm not sure the other characters are coping, either? Wonder if there's a message there!

And tomorrow, we're off to the next section and I have THE most marvelous set of agrarian woodcuts you ever saw for the heading. Do let us know your thoughts on this book!!

Ginny

Oh and Barbara mentions a three ring circus and she's so right. Having just seen the Theatro Zinzani in Seattle with our own Judy Laird, this is exactly what that reminds me of: it was dinner theater with a circus and underlying plots and dramas carried out simultaneously. It was marvelous, at the time overwhelming but in retrospect, with a plan to it. This reminds me of that. A lot. Your'e sitting there minding your own business trying to eat and here comes this character out of nowhere and begins to do something unexpected and outrageous. Can you deal with it? You can see others being lampooned. Can YOU carry the day? It's all in fun, Stella's is not, but it's the same feeling, of disembodiment and shock.

Before we leave this first section, could you all comment also on this quote in the heading? "We are all, in our journey through life, navigating toward some special, dreamed-of place; and if for some reason we are thrown off course, or the place itself, once reached, is not what we hoped for, then we must strike out at whatever risk to set things right."

Do you agree that life is a journey toward a particular goal? Is your life that focused? And if you reach the goal and it's not what you hoped for, must you then set out again? This is actually a very powerful statement about life, isn't it? Cusk is a young woman. Is this journey towards a goal something only for the young?

Ginny

Oh I do think we all have a dream and that dream is a constant - I think we measure ourselves by how well we are achieving our dream. Some are small like being known for cooking well and serving our family memorable meals and others dream larger, like changing the way a community thinks about trees or, walking a trail each year of at least 1000 miles or, designing and building homes that others would want to live or, the proverbial become president of something if not the USA, what ever. That whole self-esteem thing I think is based on having, living and seeing movement toward our dream.

My recent ahh hah came as a result of reading the year to live book by Stephen Levine in another SN Books discussion. I finally got it, that building a dream is like building a garden in which the flowers fade and die after they have bloomed and that is expected and OK. In fact a good gardener takes that into account and refreshes that area of the garden with another, later blooming flower. Some of us,me included, build a dream as if we were building a house and if a flood or tornado comes along we are devastated that our dream is in pieces all around us. I guess that old adage about not holding sand too tightly comes to play when holding onto dreams.

And yes, if the garden did not bloom as you hoped, you keep righting it till it pleases in all seasons. Some close the door of their secret garden either temporarily or permanently and give themselves away to be blown willy nilly by the nonperceived dreams of another and still others, offer the sacrifice of closing the doors to their secret garden for the greater achievement of a nation or needs of an injured child etc.

I think Stella has decided to move the location and start a new garden, and I'm looking to understand what was so painful about her other dream that a new dream/garden location was needed. Where as, Mr. Madden seems to have closed his door and is being blown willy nilly by his nonperceived understanding of Pamela's garden building. A handyman to Pamela as someone said in an earlier post.

Pamela I think is on the door sill, feeling guilty, overwhelmed and annoyed wanting to build her garden and yet feeling she ought to close the door to her garden to care for Martin. Therefore, she hires others to care for him hoping that relieves her of her anger at having such a needy child that was not part of her dream. I really think she is patronizing him rather then encouraging him to be all that he can be. To me people that patronize others are not especially interested or supportive of their dream building.

Where as Mrs. Baker either has plumbed the depths of Pamela's garden building and is assisting her confidently in building it or, her dream/garden is simply to be the family retainer, as cleaning woman go and that confidence allows her the control not to take any guff and be treated with deference. Her physical bulk showing she has padded herself against the slights of the world that would interfere with her achieving her dream.

And Martin, he is another I cannot yet figure out; what is his dream.

I think the tension between Stella and Pamela is that Stella does not want to just accept her role as a worker in Pamela's garden as Mrs. Baker appears to have accepted (a c--- accepting Pamela's drive).

Pamela's dream/garden appears to be to maintain the vision of traditional country life and a country house open to friends near and far to breath the air that was England. A Bess of Hardwick, not the Duchess of Chatsworth but possibly the Duchess of Churchdale Hall the home that the Cavendishes now adore. Martin is a stumbling block to that dream and everyone else are in her mind lackeys to her achieving her dream. The giant spider said, with the sinister glee of Simon Lagree.

Oh yes, as to that secret world out there - I am still amazed as I learn what others understand and take for granted. Example on a larger scale dream. Governor Bush in his preperation to run for the white house had researches find any web site tha may be negative toward him and then he bought them out. When he chose to influence those that would help to get him the vote and the money he influenced all the lobbiests and influencial media types in D.C. rather then turning first to the Republican party, seating congressmen, the general public etc. It would never have accured to me that someone running for office requiring positive press influences the owners of what I thought was the free press to receive that kind of support press they need to achieve their dream. It is all very logical once it is put together for me but, I am still too naïve about how successful large gardens are built. In fact for me I'm still too naïve as to the successful ways folks can sneak in and destroy someone's garden.

Needless to say in Austin there is much digging to find the chinks in Bush's armour, including the latest hoopala about use of his governer's influence to help a buddy and large contributer from Houston who is in trouble with a regulatory inspection.

Rachel Cusk IS taking us for a ride - and I'm enjoying every minute of it. There are many questions and, maybe, too many possible answers. Just how unreliable is this unreliable narrator??

Stella often identifies her own feeling of unreality, of not knowing who or where she is, of not being 'herself' although she sometimes reveals that she is beginning to doubt that she really 'knows herself' in spite of frequent assertive statements to the contrary. She often describes her own state of mind in ways similar to this (from page 78): after feeling "a guilty tremor of irresponsibility" she decides that it must be the Maddens and the events of the day that "...left me diffuse and shapeless and unconfident of my ability to assume the coherent form necessary to social interaction..." There are many passages like this throughout the book--passages that sometimes made me wonder if Stella was narrating from within a dream or coma (Alice-in-Wonderland/Wizard-of-Oz style--but in 1st-person). At the same time, I identified so strongly w/Stella, the situations, being an outsider and a klutz, etc. - that I thought to myself, "this is no dream - this is reality." One of the many ways this writer keeps me guessing.

Re the quote: "...then we must strike out at whatever risk to set things right" - does Stella really believe that this is what she is doing? I still have hope that somone will solve the mystery of the rash before this discussion is over - the burning white ridges, criss-cross marks. No matter how painful during the night, they are always gone, without a trace, in the morning - any significance? As for the mystery of the characters, we'll probably be working out solutions for quite awhile! I'm looking forward to more books by young Rachel Cusk. I'm far from an expert, but doesn't she have great promise/talent?

Hi: Gee, Ginny, I hate to burst the bubble,but I don't believe that life's a journey. Life just is..it's not good,or bad,or indifferent..it just is...It exists and if anything,we're storm tossed along for the ride. So, I prefer to ride the wave and see where it takes me.

I'm a firm believer in existenialism,I don't believe anything is pre=ordained..most things happen to us by accident and there are very few things that we have ANY control over.

If you try to "fine-tune" your life too much,then Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" will be your constant companion.

I have to agree with Ed. I've never really had a plan for my life. If it's been a journey I haven't been steering my boat but rather just drifting along seeing where it will take me. Now at 50 I've actually got my sights set on a goal for the first time, a college degree, but alas, still no concrete idea of what I'll do with it once I've got it. I'm counting on something interesting to turn up when the time comes.

I was a "hippie" during the early 70's and that mindset has never really left me. I drifted then and I'm still drifting now, just in a smaller pond. My feeling is that so far whatever has happened in my life it's been fun and unusual and I wonder what will happen next.

Two years ago I broke my knee and now have some disability in it that has necessitated this career change that I'm preparing for. Sometimes I definately feel like Stella because I'm the connsumate klutz. And I also have a fear about asking for things that others take for granted when I'm "the new kid in town". I can usually get over it a little quicker than Stella seems to be doing though.

More later. Gotta go.

What interesting posts! Am typing in the very TEETH of what may be RAIN?? RAIN? So will have to get off before putting up the new stuff for this week, which I hope you'll like, but wanted to react to some of your statements!

The "Secret World" Barb mentions: Am I the only one who sometimes wonders if everybody BUT me has the key? Where do these feelings of self doubt come from and when can we confidently expect them to go away? We can expect some from Rachel Cusk, she's young, but really, having passed half a century, shouldn't one have come to terms with or dealt with such issues?

Valerie mentioned, "...left me diffuse and shapeless and unconfident of my ability to assume the coherent form necessary to social interaction..." It's hard to articulate, but it does seem sometimes there's a whole "easy" world of or strata of socialibility out there that seems to escape me, I sometimes feel like an alien from another planet. Sometimes the things that I am interested in don't seem to matter much to most of the people I meet. Nice to have other people like our Books folks to chat with on those occsaions!

Valerie mentioned the rash, and I'm stumped. Are there any doctor sites we could go to and ask? hahahaha, Isn't there some kind of verticaria (sp) or something with that appearance? How about hives? If it goes away, it's not caused, I would think, by an external source unless it's allergy? Dr. Anderson has no clue! But I do think Cusk is a major talent, Valerie, I agree totally.

Ed and Prissy: Is there a difference between a "purpose" and a "journey?" If you are blown about on a lifeboat you are on a journey, still, aren't you? You're still going? Now the quote says we're all on a journey toward a "special, dreamed of place," which is different from a goal, and you both reject that, and I must admit to no clear formed goal either, for my life. And they do say, if you don't have a goal, you don't accomplish anything, either?

But who of us doesn't have a dream? In retrospect, I think she's saying quite a lot in that sentence which I don't think I would have noticed at all, had you all not brought your ideas up.

But if you are alive you are on a journey, no? or????? Or???? There's a difference in a goal and a dream if you don't do anything to bring the dream about, I would think. And here I guess Stella has made a big step: she's abandoned everything she knew for the great unknown, she's taken a step, altered her journey, for what dream she might have, do any of you know what that might be?? What she's looking for? Is it apparent??

Barbara! What are you saying here!~ ". Her physical bulk showing she has padded herself against the slights of the world that would interfere with her achieving her dream. "

So overweight is a padding against the world? But extreme obesity only adds to the slights of the world? So many wonderful ideas here this morning, back later today with our new stuff, hopefully, weather permitting, if not, feel free to jump right into the next section!

Ginny

Yes, Ginny I see much weight as padding that becomes like a shield that seperates someone from societies give and take and allows them to focus on living isolated in their dream with forays to connect, protect or strike out.

In response to societies disapprovel or remarks either its; "why or why do they not accept me, poor me, or I should be they way I want to be and they should accept me, this is a free country, or fat people have more fun and they're just jealous, or go away I am doing my thing, mind your own bees wax, or silently, if I could do anything about this I would but it is hard so I'll do all the right things so that you will feel bad saying anything to me." And many more - - -

The padding stays and sometimes is reinforced only to be given a guilty acknowledgment when others bring it into focus. Otherwise it is being, more involved in 'what you do' then, 'how you look' and more involvd in having an 'acceptable reason to feel guilt' rather then, the 'pain of changing behavior' needed so that padding disappears.

I guess I am speaking from the point of view of the bulky person as they might think about the advantages to staying heavy rather then from the judgement of society.

I picked up this book yesterday (after finishing Charming Billy, which I'll definitely re-read) and cannot put it down.

Have you read The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro (who also wrote Remains of the Day)? It's one of my favorite books ever. It has the same feeling (but magnified tenfold) as this book - of a world that is off kilter, a mood that is truly odd. I love this kind of writing.

The book is really very funny! I have laughed out loud several times at Stella's excrutiating first days - a bath with no towel, her awful walk to town, the melted tar on her shoes (and the cottage rug), the vomit in the front garden, the dead pigeon inside the cottage, the awful sunburn. I love the image of Stella sunburned: right arm and right leg to the upper thigh, severely burnt; left arm burnt; left leg, marble white; left cheek and neck, burnt; right cheek and neck, severley burnt; torso and upper arms, marble white; central panel of face and neck - a strip no more than an inch wide - marble white."

Hysterical! (And painful - every time she goes outside I FEEL her sunburn.)

There are so many great lines in this book. I'm dying to know which line Lawrence Norfolk of The Guardian thought was "the most unexpected line I have ever read in a work of fiction." (See back cover.)

A few I especially love:

"The first seconds of any encounter are those in which the important decisions are made, the fundamental characteristics established, the structural lines laid down." (p. 12)

I completely agree with this point in about 99% of cases. But it's kind of scary to know this, isn't it??

"If somebody's very passionate about something it tends to mean that you can't be." (p. 166 - speaking about Edward being the one who bought the records in their relationship.)

I think I've figured out Lawrence Norfolk's most unexpected single line. It's on page 96.

"...Journey through life..." - These may be just words - words that Stella feels are expected, might meet with approval, could justify her actions, etc. They could be the 'right' words. (At some point in the book Stella mentions that she can only express herself formally.) She does, however, set a series of short-term goals for herself that she reaches with mixed success, and seems to experience some satisfaction--or a sense of (illusory?) control--along the way. So, what could it all mean??-- "Getting there" or the journey itself may still be the thing even if you are only drifting or being blown about by the winds of chance--no?

Ed Z.: Is there any truth to the rumor that existentialists have the most fun? (Just kidding - I can certainly sympathize w/your point of view.)

Hi: To Valerie F.: I don't know if existentialists have the most fun,but we (I) do find many aspects of "living" or the"journey" to be totally irrational and without any reason.

Ginny: Re. "goals".."As you ramble on through life ,brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole."

Life is full of searching and reaching and accepting and we can have different goals every day...long term or short term..and I guess everyone has to reach an "accomodation" that is best suited for them.

Barbara: Speaking of fat. One of the English authors of the 2 fat ladies recipe book,just died last week at age of 72. She was totally unrepentant about enjoying lard and smoking ( cause of death was lung cancer) she was quoted as saying that she would rather enjoy herself and die young instead of living to a very old age and be deprived. I guess there's an existentialist idea somewhere in that statement.

Remember: If you don't TAKE a chance...you never GET a chance.

Oh dear at times I find it so how hard to convey or understand others with the written word. Ed and Valerie is it possibly just semantics that makes me feel confused? To me we create a picture or dream of our life not as a goal so much as, an expectation for ourselves. I dreamed I would live in a house, not in a tent or in the open fields, that I would swape skills for food and medicine etc., so that I would not be dependent on others, that after my children were born I would keep them clean and clothed and aquainted with music and books and cookies and sunrises. No, I never specificially saw myself living in Texas, having moved here in 1966, or working as a Real Estate Broker, although a home is so important to me I believed anyone that wants a house should be able to have one. Therefore, I take great pleasure in finding the house and money to help them live their dream. Now if by chance there came a reason to live in a tent it would not change my dream of being a creater of home. I never pictured or dreamed myself hurting others so that they had to lock me behind bars, nor being incapable of figurering out how to go places, or learn what would assist my survival as well as, further apprieciate the wonder around me. And yes, along with my dreams and because of my dreams I have desires of achievment or as it is called today goal setting. Although, I'm not a Stephan Covey about it.

To me Neitzsche sums it up as; "He who has a 'why' to live, can bear almost any 'how'" and Martin Luther King, Jr saying; "If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep even as Michelangelo painted. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great streetsweeper'."

It is heard for me to imagine someone with no dream - that they would accept any behavior of themselves as appropriate with no thought, given the freedom, to choose a place where they could share and work toward a certain measure of kindness or loving regard for one another. That they would choose to surround themselves with things of discomfort, pain, victimization, brutality with no agreed upon level of acceptable behavior. That they would have no level of skill they dream about as worthy of developing and untilizing for their own benefit or the benefit of others.

I think most of us include a dream of ourselves feeding and dressing ourselves, and at least walking. If this was not in the average persons dream we would be dependent as Martin on a lifetime of care. And even there, a wheel chair has given him some opportunity toward a dream of himself as seperate from complete care.

For some people I can see how certain enviornments may be filled with much pain and therefore, another location my be a place where their dream can be better played out.

Of the many definitions of Dream: To day dream, to experience an image sequence of in sleep, a state of sleep, to pass time idly or in reverie; to be impractical; soothing and serene. To consider something feasible or practical, to conceive of; imagine; a vision; an ideal; Inspire delight and wonder.

And also yes, the part of the definition that brings people to think of goal setting. To have a deep aspiration;to invent; concoct.

To me living out your dream is living the essence of who you are and denying the world the voice of your dream denies us a peice of the creator. I guess I am having a hard time envisioning no chance. Life is the chance and dreaming within the possiblities of that life of how or why you are going to live that life. I think of the many vicitimized that continue to push toward a collective dream that builds and grows with each generation. Example; the Martin Luther King Jr. mountain top dream.

Oh, now I get it. I had stopped reading the book and debated whether to say so or not. Started on Charming Billy and felt a little better about slinking off to another discussion.

But I just read your posts and have been talking back to the computer screen nonstop. I think it's out of discomfort, not indifference, that I stopped reading.

I have to move back to Texas to be near family (maybe the equivalent of Stel-la going back to London). It is the wise thing to do, given my precarious and deteriorating physical health. I'm only 50 and here I am having to give up a dream, this cottage on the coast at the base of mountains. In bits and pieces, I've been giving up other parts of how I see myself. I'm angry beyond expression.

Barbara's phrase "essence of who you are" has saved my life a few times in the last few years, however. That's a plus side of this crazy life I have---you find out fast, if you're lucky, that the essence of who you are is not linked to anything physical--body, things, money, house, place. It's something better, even though I'm hard pressed to remember that from day to day. There is some other part of me, though, that is in a dog fight almost hourly, screaming, "but you hate Texas!"

So, in a way, whatever answers I used to have about goals, dreams, the "why" of life, some of those are under renovation.

Mia Farrow has been quoted as saying that all of life is a series of losses and inbetween one loss and the next you find incredible love. I didn't read her book, nor have I seen her interviewed, but I keep running into others repeating this same quote.

Ginny, I'm so glad you wrote about the angst of doubting self. As a psychologist at Berkeley, I would have a new patient begin to tell of the misery of not fitting in, of wanting so much to feel with it, included, acknowledged, free of self doubt. As she talked on and on, I would be thinking, "oh, you dear'ole soul, don't you get it? Don't you know almost all of us feel that way!?" Later that day, I would meet with 4 other therapists in a support group we'd formed and I'd say to them, "what's wrong with me? I'm doubting the work I do with half my patients." "Only half?" some other worried face would say.

Process is a word I like better than journey. The day to day doing, being. A Zen approach to living. Living in the moment has almost lost its meaning from over exposure---but what gives me peace (when I remember to do it) is looking up from the busy-ness of the day to attend to simple, single sights, sounds. OK. Right this minute there is a black and white sleeping ball of fur on a quilt-covered ladder rung, about 7 feet up, all except this one long, dangling paw. His favorite way to sleep, always a paw hanging down. My sweetie, peetie, mooshy goosh.

Ginny, I do get in touch with a doubt-free moment here and there, as I guess you do, too. The ebb and flow of life experiences, even our current status of growth and a myriad of other factors surely figures in to how often we doubt ourselves. I do believe, however, there is a myth of thinking that others have it together and don't suffer like we do---that myth uses up too much energy. Our current societal culture of reaching for impossible perfection--airbrushed bodies on magazine covers, volumes of self-help books on achievement, the corporate world still based mostly on competition, not cooperation---this environment is a difficult one in which to discover and honor one's self, the essence of who you are.

One thing I've been doing, in fits and spurts, over the last few years, is reading about, thinking about and actually doing a paring down, a simplifying of everything. Giving away a 2nd set of dishes that I haven't used in 10 years. Lately, with clothes, kitchen stuff, things, things, things, if I haven't used it in a year or if it has no sentimental value, then I give it away. I can't explain why that has helped with image of "self" or my current challenges, but it has. Less bulk. Clearer thinking.

Uh, you guys? There are 2 paws now, each back leg hanging down on either side of a skinny ladder rung. That is one comfortable cat.

Wonderful post, ReaderDoc!! , All of your posts have been great. I have the book from the library and have read about ten pages. I`m not sure yet whether I am going on--

Looking at the cover artwork there is tons being said there isn't there - the yellow brick road that leads to the clear bright blue yonder hemmed or sheltered on either side with the dark side of the green growth and the light side is only the reflected light with the direct sunlight just on the other side of the hedge. In the artwork the hedge appears more like an inpenatrable barrier. The stripped hedge almost like Stella's stripped sunburn.

These last few recent posts provide a lot of food for thought.

I'm reminded of two quotes from Thoreau:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

To be awake is to be alive

Wow, blown away as per usual by your posts. Blown away, had to go think and think and think.

Here's this Rebecca- Romance- like book: girl throws everything away, including boy, goes off to be a nanny (note how carefully Cusk avoids that old cliche, both in the age of the charge and the condition of same??) on a big English Country upper class estate!! Meets son (2) of manor. What will happen? Is this fluff? Is this light stuff? And then you read a quote like we have in the heading? Did you READ that thing?

And then the reader steps back a bit, slap slap to the face!! SLAP, READER, are you listening to what I'm actually saying in this seemingly silly book? SLAP!!!

I'm fascinated by the two people who either stopped reading the book or are contemplating it. Readerdoc, you said you thought it was "discomfort" which caused you to put it down? But Stella is not going HOME, she's never been there before? Is there some other element in it that you identified that we don't see??

May?? How about you? I know May reads voraciously, and I have the belief that the more you read the sharper your ideas about books in general, that's one reason our Books Groups are so sharp, we read SO much, May, what's keeping you away? The style? The???

Readerdoc: what a wrenching post, bless your heart, I'm so sorry you're having to give up your cherished home. I can certainly understand your disappointment.

I hope you know that your presence, revealed here without any of the "props" we seem to value in life, is amazingly strong and vibrant, you do have an overwhelmingly brilliant voice, and I, for one, am very glad to have made your acquaintence. That computer is going to work just as well in Texas, and you can be angry all you like, some of us are, too, we can be in it together.

This quote is marvelous, am putting it right up in the heading: On Self Doubt: "The ebb and flow of life experiences, even our current status of growth and a myriad of other factors surely figures in to how often we doubt ourselves. I do believe, however, there is a myth of thinking that others have it together and don't suffer like we do---that myth uses up too much energy. Our current societal culture of reaching for impossible perfection--airbrushed bodies on magazine covers, volumes of self-help books on achievement, the corporate world still based mostly on competition, not cooperation---this environment is a difficult one in which to discover and honor one's self, the essence of who you are. "

It's funny, we all know that others have moments of self doubt, but the appearance of what's desired in society would have us think otherwise? Can we say, then, that the majority of society is playing a part? Acting on the stage? When you think of it, it seems to me that the newest and most popular TV shows reveal the angst we all feel in trying to alter our pitiful presences against the will and expectations of society. The current mass funeral expectations are almost hideous to me, we want so badly to be TOLD what is appropriate and what is not, and often times what is appropriate in the eyes of society is not the least healing but, rather, makes the situation worse. Society, after all, the greatest group, may be made up of people whose ideals are so far from yours it boggles the mind. Why, then, would you hope to be or act just LIKE them?

I have gotten to the place where I cannot watch the local news, the anchors sound like they are in a funeral home night after night after night, and a very santimonious funeral home of the air it is, too.

And as for the images we get as norms? FAT and THIN, glamorous or not??

The FAT LADIES, Ed, are a total case in point. I don't wish to speak of the recently deceased lady so will try to speak in generalities. Yes, live life to the fullest, but die at 72 of lung cancer? Is gluttony and smoking living life to the fullest?

Am I the only one who panics at the sight of those 1,000 pound people? Did you realize your skin would stretch that far? Isn't that frightening. There go I, if I don't do something??

I think seizing life and grabbing hold is good. I'm worried about excesses being spoken of as grabbing on life. I have never seen the FAT LADIES and I know everybody loves them, but surely by now we all know smoking is addictive and harmful? Gluttony used to be one of the 7 deadly sins, if it's still not. Dante had a level of hell for the glutton.

Barb, in my case, overweight is a sign of unhappiness or stress. That's not so for everybody, I know. Have always been big, anyway, but we all deal with stress differently, some smoke like the FAT LADY, some drink, some do drugs, some eat, some walk, some write, de gustibus. I eat. And instead of insulating me from the world, it exposes me, when I'm, like right now, too fat. Look at the fashions for big women. They're all about HIDING. HIDING! How can you HIDE avoirdupois? And now in these 100+ temps, one is expected to wear shorts. I don't. So there we are, what's she trying to hide?

I bought a new roll of paper towels yesterday, expensive ones, Bounty, for a change, as I find they go three times as long as the cheapos and there's a VERSE on the paper towel!!

A verse for living on the paper towel, contemplate that for a moment!

"The key to happiness belongs to everyone on earth...who recognizes simple things as treasures of great worth."

Simple things. Am I the only one tired of the "simple things" concept? Over the weekend I saw a book in Books A Million which I bought on The Countryside ($2.98) and it's full of quotes like the Thomas in the heading, and marvelous illustrations, thought you all might like to see some, will put up new ones M, W, and F, but look at what the introduction says!!

"The town is the face and the country is the soul of the world. It is said town and country often are seen in oppositition: sophistication pitted against simplicity, artifice against nature, restless change against tranquility.

From the city the countryside is seen as a heartland that both arouses and soothes the senses and the soul. In the country we feel at peace and yet somehow more aware. The constant cycle of growth and renewal is there, undiluted, before us. Indeed, no matter how far we live from the country, we carry its rhythms in our blood and recognize its influence in our hearts and minds.

The countryside--in imagination and reality--had been reinvented by humankind. Our tools have shaped it and our culture ahd overlaid it with symbolic meanings. Associated with it are all the virtues and pleasures of a wholesome life: natural beauty, quiet peace, honest toil. 'Back to Nature!' we cry, meaning back to simplicity, truth and goodness, as well as greenness."

I think that's fascinating. So "country" actually means something to the vast majority of those who hear the term.

Stella refers to herself in the first section as a "metaphor." I wonder if the entire book is some sort of metaphorical thing? I think, I really do think, there's something more there, I hope we can find it together!!

Barb, two sizzling points from you!!

The cover!! Wow, well done. Yellow brick road. Light always shining on the OTHER side of the hedge! Hedges like a maze! Well done.

Have any of you ever been thru one of those large mazes in England? The one at Hampton Court? Spooky!! The one at Leeds Castle is much more friendly, those who have "made it" to the end guide the others on, from the vantage point of a high hill in the center, it's really something else. Life, then? Are we to say it's a maze and blunder thru it with our Stella (our star?)

And then this from Barb:"Of the many definitions of Dream: To day dream, to experience an image sequence of in sleep, a state of sleep, to pass time idly or in reverie; to be impractical; soothing and serene. To consider something feasible or practical, to conceive of; imagine; a vision; an ideal; Inspire delight and wonder. :

Wow. Now can we look at the dream of Stella's, which is on page 110? How, (Readerdoc, you have revealed yourself now!! Do help us with that dream, is that suicidal??) What are we to make of the fall, and the free float and the cheerful waving to those looking on? What?? What do all these dreams mean??

Wow!!

And a small cavil: why is it that so many people in this thing are odd in appearance? Alice in Wonderland analogy here? The Post Master, if that's what he is, is called "the creature?" Martin is misshapen. Mr. Trimmer is odd, I don't understand why everybody in the book is so bizarre, is it because if Cusk used normal people she wouldn't make the same point, but what IS the point?

I feel, in this book, as if I'm in a maze myself, and Cusk is teasingly holding out the carrot in front, but I know I can get it if I just stretch a little harder!

What does that dream mean, what does the quote in the heading about dishes in the sink mean??

Inquiring minds want to know! hahahahaha

Ginny

Ginny - you're amazing.

Readerdoc - my thoughts are with you, and I hope this move isn't too traumatic. Your contributions here have been so . . . life-affirming - please stay with us.

I think your point Ginny about city vs. country is very . . . contemporary. A lot of city folk like me are contemplating a move to the country. We - like Stella - are utterly unprepared for such a life. We think things will be simpler there. I suspect they aren't.

I remember having similar feelings to Stella's at about age 29. I was working in a big downtown law firm, about 80 hours a week, and all I wanted to do was ESCAPE. I'd had an adventure 10 years before that, and rekindled a flame from that time that I should probably have let burn out. The experience was altogether unsatisfactory.

Escape is just not possible. Every time I think I can change things by a mere change of scenery, I fall dismally short.

Clearly, Stella's problems are still with her wherever she goes.

On another topic - someone said early on in this discussion that they appreciated Stella's easy relationship with Martin. I don't perceive their relationship in that way at all. I find him to be insufferable, manipulative. He acts out, and then apologizes and expects forgiveness because of his disability. I don't appreciate this at all. I'm not sure what Cusk is trying to tell us with this - or with all of the disfigured characters in the novel (as Ginny points out). Any ideas?

Have you ever known a Toby? I certainly have. Why are such men so powerful - especially with young women. I wasted a lot of time on the Tobys of this world.

SarahT - I like the points you made about city vs country. Stella was not able to escape her problems by moving to the country. This book appears to me to be about Stella's growth in the ability to have relationships. Personal histories and reputations are a very important part of rural communities, which makes the country a great setting for Stella's growth.

bingo Sarah when you said - "I find him to be insufferable, manipulative. He acts out, and then apologizes and expects forgiveness because of his disability. I don't appreciate this at all. I'm not sure what Cusk is trying to tell us with this - or with all of the disfigured characters in the novel."

Especially in light of reading Charming Billy - It may not be what Cusk had in mind but, it fits. How many excuss are given by folks not taking the higher ground or acting in a way to hurt someone and they expeced to be excused because of some lifetime painful experience that may have crippled. I would say they do not take responsibility but, for me responsibility simply means the ability to respond. There are many responses; running the other way or, striking out is certainly a response but, I think most of us assume the word means to respond with integrity and in a socially acceptable way with caring and consern for our fellow beings regardless of your personal history or difficulties.

Maybe that is why Stella and Martin have an ease with one another, one is crippled inside and the other visibly outside. Of course that does bring up my great, well frankly rage. Those that are crippled inside must protect the public from knowing and often attempt behavior that is beyond their capacity to handle although, some days are they are better then others and much behavior they can perform with excellance. Just as the public often prefers to look away at physical handicap the public really does not take the announcement of emotuonal wounds with grace or ease and understanding. You can't say oh I had a bad day or night and I need to wait a day to complete this or that task or I need help with that because it is too close to my memory of...

Could that be what Cusk is getting to - That whatever Stella is running from combined with her painful history she is trying to walk the maze and desided to switch mazes. Since she is handicapped and must hide it, much as she hides not being able to drive, she goes forward with distrous consequences

Howdy...(practicing Texan)...You guys are something else. I've received some wonderful emails from several of you, and from 2 who are participating in other book discussions and, surprisingly, from one who isn't yet in SeniorNet but drops by to read. My goodness, I kept saying. How wonderful to read some private stories of how others have dealt with difficult times, suggestions of alternative action (2 of you said "you don't have to go!!"), but mostly just encouraging words of support and reminders that my computer will still work in Texas. You mean they have electricity down there now? Hey, it's my old stomping ground, so I can make fun of it. I will have to get rid of my favorite saying that I picked up from another ex-Texan here in the Pacific northwest---"I'm a recovering Texan."

At any rate, thank you for the lovely thoughts. They have made a difference.

Changing horses here. You make a good point, Barbara, concerning the stigma of emotional difficulties. Isn't it strange how we continue to separate mental and physical, even today when so many "emotional" problems are found to be related to physical chemical measurements and in some cases can be so easily treated with medication. But to say, "I use medicine to treat my diabetes," is heard differently from, "I use medicine to treat my depression." As recently as the turn of the century, people with mental illness were thought to be demon possessed and were warehoused/institutionalized in deplorable prison-like places. Conditions had improved only slightly by 1950. Even though current treatment or discussion of mental illness has evolved dramatically, I'm sure most of us have family members and friends that are still uncomfortable with discussion of a range of emotional problems. What a shame.

I agree, Barbara, there is a lot of needless secrecy. Imagine calling an employer to say, "I won't be coming in today. I'm depressed." Not the same as having the flu, I'm afraid.

In thinking of Pamela, Martin and Stella, I'm frustrated with the limited information we have. Stella is a mixture of thoughtful intelligence, fear, vision, painful (or comic) awkwardness, a mysterious past. I feel like I know even less about the other two. This author means for us to have limited information, it seems. Are we supposed to be doing all this projecting/guessing about them? Is there an overall view I'm missing? Did the author chuckle as she wrote about the sunburn, the tarred shoes, the car-driving terror? Are we to laugh or be reminded of our own painful moments? Have any of you wondered if some books reveal as much about the reader as the author? I think this may be one.

Ginny, sorry, I don't do much with dreams. If a friend told me a dream she'd had, I'd be likely to say, "What do you make of that?" and really want to know what she thought. As a feminist therapist, I avoided the more traditional "I know everything/you know nothing" format. What turns me on is the egalitarian spirit of (mostly) women working together, helping each other feel powerful. The very best days I ever had involved staying (mostly) quiet in women's groups, watching connections grow and women helping women heal. Reading books and discussing them in a setting like this where we all are interested in others' comments and are polite but honest...and come from such diverse experiences...reminds me a little of those groups.

Shoot Readerdoc I know the State is large with different ways; panhandle, piney woods, coast, the valley and Big D but, around here and in the hill country it seems to be Haaayy - Hay drawn out rather then 'Howdy'.

Your right, I hadn't noticed, I know as much about room decor and country vistas as I do the characters. Had you noticed that her misadventures seem to be strung together - this wouldn't happen if that hadn't happened. She wouldn't have been sick if she didn't buy the canned ham that, she only bought because she had little money that, she only used because she didn't know she was going to have a cottage to herself and not be included in all family meals, which she didn't know because she didn't inquire about the scope of the job when applying for the job without hiding the fact she didn't have a full battery of required skills etc. etc.

This is more like a mystery then a humorous novel. Need to finish this book quick and see if it then pulls together.

Barbara... Love THAT sentence.

Is there a little bit of Monty Python in this novel?

Barbara - unfortunately, it doesn't pull together. The ending is truly an anti-climax. It's a truly odd book. Entertaining as heck, but I definitely couldn't question anything too deeply. I think it's supposed to be a funny book, with a lot of pain masked underneath.

Cusk is a good writer. I suspect she needs to develop her style to respond to all of the criticisms we've had. I envision her up there with Booker prize winner Ishiguro in no time.

Oh dear - so we will be left with a litany of Stella's mishaps?

I laughed so hard I cryed - Stella driving the car - Rachel Cusk not only has a way with an event but her words and sentences discribing are wonderful. I thought she picked up steam about half way into the story.

Finished, but I'll wait till the twenty first to share. For me it was tied up, made sense and I loved it. Saw the final coming as it built from page 166 but didn't see coming the sister's intended that won't commit as the full circle.

Oh good I'm so glad somebody made sense of it, I have so much to say about your posts and that DREAM but am typing in the teeth of a storm so have to get off, back at ya as soon as I can get on! Loved everybody's posts!

Ginny

Well, I must say I have felt totally like Stella these past few days and yesterday afternoon was no exception. Talk about the Country Life, tho I suspect it could have happened in any place or city, but we had a famous "Pin Point Doppler" Tornado warning yesterday, a tornado was spotted in a cloud/ storm? not clear but heading right for our little place at 15 mph. We don't usually (knock on wood) have them thru here, they tend to split around us, but it was daylight and we had lots of warning. First the power went, then the phone, then the storm came, it was strange and eerie, large hail, but it never touched down, tho we lost some shutters off the house (my husband says if you look at those shutters they come off) and a huge old hickory tree, but the strangest thing was you could HEAR it? You could hear it, it was just as they report, like a train, but it passed over and I can see no reports this morning where it may HAVE touched down, I hope it didn't. When everything turned a bit greenish and the trees started to move strangely, I camped in the bathroom but it went by. So we were totally lucky, and the power is back on (the joy of a rural cooperative, we almost never are without power very long) and now, as you can see, the phone lines are back, amazing. That's one sound I hope never to hear again, so am totally rattled this morning, hope to get back today to say how great your posts are and to mention those DREAMS she had!

Ginny

I have to agree with SarahT about the anti-climatic ending. I kept wanting the ends to all be tied up neat and nice and was a little disappointed that I still didn't understand the Maddens when I finished the last sentence. Maybe that was the point in a way, maybe they are just not to be understood. All along we were seeing them through Stella's eyes and was she the most reliable judge of character? Her view of everything and everyone was distorted by her own mental state so it's very possible that we are never shown the true personalities of the family.

Were they inconsiderate and unfeeling or was Stella just expecting too much from them? After all she was to be an employee. On page 15 she tells us that "I had been existing in the temporary heaven of believing that I was the guest, rather than the servant..." and I think that she continues in that assumption until the end. She was wanting the scope of her relationship with the family to be more than what it was intended to be.

Because she answered an ad for a job that she was in no way qualified for she seems afraid to ask or question anything. In the other aspects of her life she isn't a timid or shy person. She made a firm decision on her honeymoon and took matters into her own hands to leave London. Even though this could be seen as running away from her fear, I think it must have taken some courage to make such a drastic change in her life.

She makes some stupid choices along the way. Rather than ask the terms of her employment she charges ahead with a move to the country knowing nothing about what to expect. Bringing the wrong clothes is only the beginning. The long and uncomfortable walk to town and the fearsome driving experience both occur due to her reluctance to face her inadequacies.

The Maddens seems to be almost charicatures of the English landed gentry. All of the selfish and self-centered aspects of that "class" combined. They have money, the obligatory castle of a house, the eccentricity of the British ruling class, the husband who married up, into a wealthy family, and inherited all the work of running a working farm, and the oddball children. What tools did Stella have against them?

Ginny - that sounds terrifying! And you talk about losing a huge tree - where did it go? Did the wind blow it over, or did it just fly away?

We had an earthquake on Tuesday, and the forces of nature came back to bite me. I was born in San Francisco and never thought twice about the frequent small earthquakes we have. All that changed in 1989 with the Loma Prieta quake. It was the first time in my life I thought to myself: "We're going to die."

So now every earthquake scares me. I suspect the folks in Florida feel that after hurricane Andrew, and that there are other life-changing disasters that do this to others around the country. I am truly happy that you came out okay, Ginny.

Prissy - you're right. These characters are really odd. I don't know what to make of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it - but it was so "off" in so many respects - the creature, the weird thing with the guns and the little metal nooses, the flyer delivered to the cottage, the bizarre centre Martin attended, the awful Mr. Trimble. Such a strange book!!

"One is acquitted not only of the original crime, but also of the suspicion that one might in fact under other circumstances have committed it and of the consequences of having done so; all of which, in addition, are washed away in a matter of moments by some anticipated pleasure."

What is to me so basically funny about this book is that in every attempt that Stella makes towards her anticipated pleasure the opposite becomes the reality. In fact this whole story in filled with irony.

I didn't catch on till half way through the book and then it hit me - A year ago or so, I read "The Cottage Garden" by Anne Scott-James and learned that the cottage garden has great symbolic value. Historically, cottages where the means for self-sufficiency for the farm laborer and calculated as part of his annual income. Originally the cottager were the aristocrats of village artisans and any servants of the gentry who 'lived out'; Blacksmiths, the gardeners or dairymen for whom there was no room in the manor house. Later half of the eighteenth century the poor man's garden became a status symbol with the "estate cottages ... the most enduring memorial of the Victorian social order."

The cottage was typically on a rood of land, 1/4 of an acre, surrounded by a either a fence or a hedge of pruned and woven quickthorn, planted in front with herbs, flowers and vegetables and one tree, often an apple tree for shade. In back was more neat rows of vegetables, bee hives, a pig sty for one pig and more fruit trees. The produce husbanded well, not only supplied all the food for the cottager and family but surplus was sold for extra income. There were political debates as to whether the cottage should be an acre, large enough for two pigs or the traditional quarter acre. Flowers and flowering vines in the nineteenth century gave the sentimental look we associate with the cottage today.

An official report in 1860 commented "On entering an improved cottage, with a neat and civilized garden, in which the leisure hours of the husband are pleasantly and profitably employed, wit will be found that he has no desire to frequent the beershop, or spend his evenings away from home, the children are reared to labour, to habits and feelings in independence, and taught to connect happiness with industry and to shrink from idleness and immorality; the girls make good servants, obtain the confidence of their employers, and are promoted to the best situations. All very true, but rather cold-blooded."

The cottage garden with its herbs and honeysuckle and its pig in the sty from Chaucer's time until today a bastion of independence for the poor is so entrenched in the British psyche the average Brit could not put the above in words.

Stella ensconced in her cottage with garden is anything but self sufficient and each incident of her inadequacy hits a button that is ironically humorous. Her attempt at self-sufficiency; going to market to buy a fat pit, home again home again jiggety jig results in her getting sick on the canned pig - she is dependent on the land owner for most of her meals. Of course she had to have one drinking escapade after another that lead to her feeling the affects of the drink - in the cottage.

More irony; she takes a walk that opens to a view dreamed about, a country scene right out of Van Gogh or Brueghel and she has a severe allergy attack. A car, a machine of freedom and to Stella it is a "perpetual state of stress... that was unnatural and to be inured to it would be to acquire an inhuman range of attributes." The center where Martin is supposed to learn group living and self-sufficiency with kindness is blamed and ridiculed publicly for what he cannot control and patronized with busy work less challenging then if he stayed home. Caroline acting like a child and then immediately after this outburst announces she is going to have a child. Mr. Trimmer running to assist Stella at the public walkway stairs with a ominous rifle in his hand. The anticipated, usually depicted 'friendly' villagers judging the behavior and projecting their own secret immoralities on the Maddens. The Maddens secreting their home away behind verdant trees and bushery cut in shapes similar to the custom of the seventeenth century although this is the twenty-first century and their status as stars of the village, promotes the curiosity, judgment and broadcasting of their private behavior. The gentry protecting themselves not through space and greenery but by a set expectation of behavior that also, builds walls to making fans of their audience.

Then the Maddens portrayed as about as dysfunctional as a family can be. The husband evidently still reacting to his war experience; Caroline's childlike behavior; Toby with his sex addiction and having gotten the previous girl pregnant; Pamela who according to the villagers slept around but by marrying Piers saved him from himself; Irreverent Martin very aware of the family responsibility to open the Rose Garden, a thing of beauty to the public, 'to the manor born' and attends the school that generations of Maddens attend and he, Martin may not even be a Madden and also knows his comfortable existence is only for as long as his parents are alive ( I think I would be angry and irreverent facing the loss of my home through no fault of my own) - as compared to Stella's family whose loss she thought should have been handled differently blinded her to "What a lovely sight would have greeted me, if only I had been looking at it through different eyes!" this following being told by Martin, "It's no good saying that if people aren't perfect you're not going to love them, Stel-la. That's what families are all about. They absorb things. They grow round them. The may end up looking all twisted and ugly, but at least they're strong."

And then the biggie, the climax - Stella as Dorothy with the strawman, tinman and cowardly lion all within her, on her yellow brick road to the blue yonder of peaceful country tranquillity. Stop the world I want to get off feeling. She was only in reaction to her feelings after her bother was killed. Edward married Stella, she really only let life happen and slid into what was easy. Her heart was frozen at the time of the death of her brother and eath to her of the family as she knew it. She had no picture of a future with Edward and without the courage to tell him face to face she left him. Most of Stella's mishaps are because she lacks the courage to tell or ask for what she needs. She even consents to going out with Mr. Trimmer. With Martin's encouragement her big act of courage is to face the family after the episode in the pool with the champagne. Stella is sure she will be fired. Once she faces what she is afraid of, acts with courage her life can begin. Martin says, "Everyone has to face things. It's the only way. Come on...Hurry up." Prior to this she was bent in half with both halves of her life matching a forfeiture of her life because of a lack of courage to say what was on her mind, have a mind of her own, open her heart and eyes to what was beyond her pain.

Martin encourged her growth and believed in her every step of the way. I think Millie and Mark were just the means to tie Edward back to the story and show Stella's near drowning as a foil to her handling of leaving her marriage along with her possible suicide attempt. there is so many more symbolism, looking at both the shadow and bright side of every situation in this book. A few things I have not doped out are, the significance of Martin calling Stella, 'Ste-la' nor the mysterious rash.

I think the significance of the two tone suntan on her face is symbolizes her lack of facing and then later, her courage of finally facing: her responsibilities, defining who she is and what she wants in her life.

Just as the two sides of Mr. Trimmer are, the helpful and the menacing with a collection of firearms in his home. And his flat cardboard appearance represents nothing between "his ears".

Stella falls down the stairs at Pamela's feet, as Pamela fell from 'grace'. And Stella, hurting, wants to lay around and nurse her back, daydreaming and sleeping in the sun as, Pamela nurses her wounds, sunning by the pool, her mythical patch of blue yonder, till her skin is like leather. Of course Pamela has no sympathy for Stella's fall - Pamela has been there, done that - You just get up and go on as she has. And Martin, the product of her affair, ouch what a reminder each day, no wonder Pamela is not always logical and is exasperating, inconsistant.

And probably the Irony of the whole story that Stella runs away to her idylic fantasy of the country so that she could avoid facing up to saying her mind and in the country she still has to stand up and face her embarrassment. The country is peopled with as many if not more problems then her life in the city as well as, illuminates her shadows/problems of: lack of courage and lack of skill to drive and feeling at odds within a family structure.

I'm of the opinion that Rachel Cusk exaggerated every behavior and event so the irony is seen, the contrast of what was expected by the reader is thrown into sharp focus. The Maddens had to be as mixed up as they are, with crazy behavior, in order to really understand that, accepting family is so much more valuable, especailly today in light of family disintegration and the propensity for hurting family members to choose a cure that includes seperating themselves from their family.

First let me say I truly apologize for dropping the ball here, I've read the book three times and until this afternoon couldn't make heads or tails of it and I resisted coming in here until I could.

It IS a bizarre book, very well written, but totally off the wall. I laughed out loud on the driving lessons, the sunburn, groaned with her "killing" the dog, the fall down the steps, the near drowning, etc., etc.,etc., yet I thought a pattern would emerge. Today I believe I finally have found one and so can take my place with you all in here once again!

As the song says, You may be right, I may be crazy! The book makes you feel crazy, or it did me! hahahahahaaa

First let me say Sarah, thanks, I appreciate it, would be frightened in an earthquake, I have no doubt! The tree was knocked down and it had more than 50 rings and was perfectly healthy: a good size hickory tree, now cut up.

Here's today's headlines on the baseball sized hail . The white ball on the right of the hailstone is a golf ball. We did NOT get any this size, this was in town, we got more of the wind, I think.

Have decided to break this into small posts, so back atcha in a mo! Have some super stuff for the heading!! Stay tuned!!

Ginny

Prissy, I'm sure glad I rushed back in here before you left us for school, it's tomorrow, is it? We will surely miss you, you must just pop your head in and say HI!!

I thought you made some marvelous points and it's nice to have everybody's thoughts to mull over with this, as Valerie said, Monty Pythonesque book.

In fact, since Valerie said that, I've been hooked on it and of course Barb's explanation of the zoo it was rings totally true: irony of ironies, it sure is irony, the exact opposite outcome than you might have been expecting. Boy o boy!!

And Sarah and Prissy found it anticlimactic, and I did, too. I have a firm belief in authors that every string will be found tied and every reference explained. Yet Barb offers a great explanation for that, too, in that Stella finally faced her problems, and, upon entering the dining room, not only faced her demons but stood them down and found a place for her at the table.

Do you all think that THIS, indeed, is the climax of the book? Does the book have a climax?

I find, with Prissy, I do not understand the Maddens any more than I did when we started. I would not be astonished to turn the page and find Piers sprouting horns or maybe wearing a dress as Esther Williams writes in her new book that she found Jeff Chandler (remember HIM??) wearing.

Wonderful point, Prissy, about WHY she was so diffident about speaking up: she was not qualified for the job, she did not meet the qualifications of the ad so could not afford to draw attention to herself.

When you add that to her already sort of passive agressive stuff (running out on Edward, feeling trapped and suicidal on the honeymoon) Barb's explanation makes great sense, and I sure do marvel at your ability to get to the heart of things, Barb!!

More!

Ginny

And the thing is just full of wonderful phrases (does it help if I break it up like this?)

And almost a new kind of irony: the pitiful ironic life. Getting sick on canned pig. The Runaway Bride (almost overdone for obviousness). Such wonderful points, Babara, great JOB!!!

Also did not miss the quote about how, even tho twisted and ugly the family is still strong, I guess Martin was referring to the Maddens there.

Just wonderful analysis, Everybody!!

I've been looking at those dreams and daydreams and it seems to me that the entire thing parallels her dreams, her dream (which we later learn was predicated on her actual experience on her honeymoon of collapsing on the railing of the hotel) of falling off the railing, falling down toward the street. Most people who fall off railings, I would think, are possibly suidical or murdered or terribly accident prone? We know she felt trapped and so thought about ending it all, yet her DREAM shows her, while actually falling toward the street, gaily waving to people who wave back. Sort of like her passage through the Country Life, gaily waving while falling again and again.

Then she has another day dream of collapsing over the railing and feeling that she had made some terrible journey from which she could not return and had entered into a "place of inverse proportions to those which nature had dictated." (page 292) Boy that certainly describes the Maddens.

Then she dreams that Edward is a baby, and is, in fact, in a wheelchair. What do all these dreams mean and why did the author take up ink with them?

I think the climax of the book occurs on page 340, as she sits on the floor with the hot dish. "In that moment, crouched on the floor beside the steaming dish, I had a most peculiar feeling. It started as a sensation of almosIt overwhelming unreality, as if I had woken up and found myself there without the faintest idea of how I had come to be so; but then this feeling peaked or crested in some way, and I felt it flood out of me like something boiled over. When it had gone, I became aware of the most remarkable silence; not in the house but in myself. The roar of the past week had ceased. I was quiet. I was quiet inside. I picked up the serving dish and bore it into the dining room.

I think that's the climax. I have no earthly idea what has caused it, is it her facing up at last to her own self? Then why does the climax take so long to occur after she does that? WHAT has occurred right before this?

I believe this is where the feeling of anticlimax comes, as I do think Cusk is making a pretty strong point even mirroring with words the build up and let down, that this IS the actual climax, but WHAT is the cause?????????????

Inquiring minds want to know? HELP!!

Confused

Oh Ginny great I love this: "her DREAM shows her, while actually falling toward the street, gaily waving to people who wave back. Sort of like her passage through the Country Life, gaily waving while falling again and again."

Oh and yes, the "quiet inside" does say she finally was in tune with her own spirit or nature. Yes, a huge climax.

I think any thought or belief is only as good as it is acted on. Therefore, we had to have Stella act with her understanding of her inner self and also, like a knight slaying the dragon, she had to banish her demons - her inability to face up to the difficulties and embarrassments in life, fearful of the outcome as it may hurt her. In addition, I think we had to have some visiable means for Stella to accept family, warts and all, so that she could heal herself by forgiving her family. Until we forgive others we cannot forgive ourselves. With the courage of a lion and a tinman's new heart she no longer needs to act so addle headed.

My thought as to how this all started for Stella is; when she was a child and experienced the pain of losing her brother there was no one there to encourage her to express her feelings. And so she numbed them with an inner dialogue, she stopped feeling anything new, afraid it would resurrect her feelings about her brother and gradually she retreated and looked to others to take care of her, much as a child wanting her feelings to be taken care of.

This was not enough, being taken care of. Where as some seek counceling, Stella sought a change of place. With the right support, words from Martin and also, seeing Martin dependent on others and how unfair that was, prompted Stella to move on. She risked going into action and as a result gradually she captured her true self.

Prissy I'm going to miss your regular posts - you so often put my head in gear about another way to look at something. Hopefully, from time to time, you will be able to pop-in even just to comment on what we are posting since you may not have time to read the book we would be discussing. Good luck this semester.

Prissy - I too hope you will look in occasionally, as I've really enjoyed your point of view. When you're studying on the computer, click over here and say hello!

I've read several of the reviews of this book to try to get a grasp on it, and no one beats Barbara's analysis (have you ever been a book reviewer, Barb?).

Each reads pretty much like this one, from the NY Times:

*****

book review The Country Life By Lisa Zeidner New York Times Special Features THE COUNTRY LIFE By Rachel Cusk Picador, $24 Read Chapter One Feb. 7 - Fresh air! Real people! A return to family values! Right-o. The moment a character in a British novel craves country life, gleeful readers know what to expect: the doddering, besotted aristocrats; the grand old manor decaying; the local folk toothless perverts; even the animals not pleasingly pastoral but randy and repulsive. The parodic country idyll is so well entrenched as a genre in Britain that a whole generation of prep school boys has memorized the dialogue from the cult film "Withnail & I,'' in which two young London roommates, during their charming weekend away, do things to a chicken that make the horse-head-in-the-bed scene from "The Godfather'' look like a gentle training session on humane animal treatment. Rachel Cusk's third novel, "The Country Life,'' stands squarely in this comic tradition. The risk was that the jokes wouldn't translate to an American audience. But they do, handily. The first of this novelist's books to be published here, "The Country Life'' boasts pitch-perfect tonal control and humor of such sly subversion that the novel's premise transcends mere skit. Twenty-nine-year-old Stella Benson ditches her London life, packs light and takes off for the tiny town of Hilltop, in Sussex. There she is to help Piers and Pamela Madden of Franchise Farm care for their disabled 17-year-old son, Martin. The last governess has departed under mysterious circumstances. Stella herself, it appears, has a secret in her past that she is eager to bury. "I just want to be left alone,'' Stella declares. If that's true, she has come to the wrong place. Stella finds herself thrust into all of the tangled business of the fractious Maddens. She also may or may not be privy to a plot by the locals to expose the Maddens as the unscrupulous, licentious - and possibly homicidal - tyrants they are. A reader is certainly inclined to feel sorry for Stella, who has been given no advance on her salary, no food, no towels and no definite idea of her duties, although her employers accuse her almost at once of performing them poorly. "My story so far could be regarded,'' Stella confides, "as a history of oppression, one of those old-fashioned stories in which a poor, plain heroine endures all the misfortunes that social and material disadvantage can devise for her, but lives to be triumphantly rewarded at the last moment for her forbearance.'' But at around the point that Stella transforms her slacks into foxy hot pants with the use of a pair of nail scissors - before she steals the booze or begins to chauffeur her paraplegic charge, although she has no driver's license and in fact has never sat behind the wheel of a car - readers begin to suspect that she is not exactly a stable woman. "I stood on the brink of an abyss of self-consciousness,'' Stella admits, "a void into which I often fall, rendering me unable, even over several hours, to dress myself.'' Not Mary Poppins, in short. Although why a smart 17-year-old who can wheel his chair himself and attends an exclusive academy (made handicapped-accessible for him alone by his doting parents) requires the full-time services of a governess is not quite clear. Actually, it's clear what Martin wants to do with Stella. It's the same thing that his dashing, cavalier older brother, Toby, wants to do with her as soon as he sees her in the hot pants. It's the same thing the Maddens' farm manager, Mr. Trimmer, wants to do with her, though she has been warned that Mr. Trimmer's mama, with whom he still lives, will brook no competitors. Because Stella's escapades are related in her own skittish, stilted, often smashed, always highly unreliable voice, it's frequently difficult to tell what's really happening. The Maddens are either landed aristocracy of legitimate menace or fairly ordinary if pretentious folk with a bit of family money to keep up the Elizabethan rose garden. The pleasure of "The Country Life'' derives from how skillfully Cusk draws us into "the solipsistic cabbage patch'' of Stella's consciousness. Like Alice in Wonderland, Stella often seems to have critical scale problems. She can get inordinately bent out of shape by a sunburn or a hangover. The end of the novel, however, finds her stewed on champagne, attempting to impale the family dog with the tip of a picnic table umbrella. The novel's climax is sure to offend anyone who gets sentimental about pets or considers suicide a grave, existential matter. Cusk's Whitbread Prize-winning first book, "Saving Agnes,'' was an energetic dating novel, the type of which "Bridget Jones's Diary'' is the most visible recent example - a genre featuring hapless but not conventionally helpless young women looking for love. "The Country Life'' is an altogether stranger, more sophisticated confection. Stella's love life is the very least of her problems. For this delightful novel about the governess from hell, maybe only the word "wicked'' will do.

*****

Yes, I agree, Barb is fabulous! Thanks for that review, too, Sarah, should we write our own for B&N??

But HAH?? What's this?

"The novel's climax is sure to offend anyone who gets sentimental about pets or considers suicide a grave, existential matter. "

Uh oh. It's obvious this reviewer and I don't see eye to eye on the climax, is the DOG the climax? What suicide? HAH??

Ginny

Yes, lets. Barbara, what would you think about incorporating lots of your analysis in the review?

I am so excited - thank you all for the good words - for some reason I needed to hear feedback after I posted this time - Oh great I am so glad I could see something in this story that got others on a track so they could share even more insight.

Sarah thanks for sharing that review - don't you love the wity way that reviewers can word their pithy critic. I'd love to know how to think and write like that. Rather then a reviewer I think I am more an exploring analyser. Your questions are so great as I scramble to sort an answer from the book and my storehouse of experiences.

Thanks all - I'm breathing again.

Oh my we posted at almost the same time - Take what you will and if it is a group project - this review - then I am game - I really do not go into new experiences very well alone but, I am a great backer and group participater.

This was my first group book discussion, and I enjoyed it so much.

Ginny - I definitely agree with you on the line that marks the climax. At that point I gave a big sigh and felt it all come together.

Barbara - It was your words that best explained why the book came together for me.

Thanks so much to you all. I certainly gained more from this group than I contributed. Hope to measure up to your level some day.

Wait, wait, now, don't go away, but thanks for the great words, Marylou, you'd never know it was your first, you're a PRO!! I've enjoyed the discussion, too! But help, now, how can the dog be the climax?

Is it possible that the "Quiet" climax is not? Then what is it? Is it the denouement? WHAT?? How can the DOG be the climax?

Let's all go back and look again at the dog thing, from the dog attack on 318 (do you still all have the book?) to the end??

And what of this sentence ON MOTHERHOOD? "She was not maternal; by which I mean that she did not appear to have given up, as so many mothers did, her self regard." HAH?? What does that mean and there are MORE MORE!~!

Waittttttttt!! hahahahahaa

Barbara, for heaven's sake, that was totally brilliant. Let's do, we've got two weeks, let's write (let's let Barbara write) our joint review?

Once we get the climax straight, that is. What scene did the entire book build up to? The dramatic tension led where? Surely not the dog? HELP??

I hate to miss important stuff. Let's write the NY Times woman if we find we do disagree!

Ginny

Thanks Barb, your insights have really given me some things to think about this book. I'm going to miss your postings a lot...more than you know. You've always made me think more and harder and so many of your excellent thoughts have been bookmarked so that I can go back and look them over again.

And Ginny, can I ever thank you enough for all the help you've given me and all the joy of getting to know you here? Probably not but please know that I've appreciated it all. Yes, school starts tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it, a little nervous but that will wear off after the first class.

SarahT, I've truely enjoyed all the conversations here and in the Prize Winner Section. Trust that I will be checking in now and then to lurk around and see what is up.

And to everyone else out there, thanks for all the fun and I'll see you all at Christmas break and then again next summer...so keep up the good work and all the fun. I'll really miss you guys!!!

Prissy

Prissy, we're like Physician's Mutual: we're "here when you need us!" hahahahah

and MAIDA!@@ YOU, TOO????

Maida has made a pledge to look in every morning if she has to do it at 4 am, so I'm holding her to that! hahahahahaa

OK, going off to look for the definitions of climax and denouement in literature, hold on!!

Ginny

Oh good - cause I was struggling to figure how impaling the dog with the unbrella was the climax - I usually look at the litany of choices or events that lead from one to another and the final event or change event in the chain is usually the climax. Stella does have some pro-active happenings from stealing liquer, driving frightened to death, walking to the village, cutting her slax into shorts and wearing them and not allowing Mr. Trimmer to have his way with her till she finally digs deep and faces standing up for herself with authority figures. But, I do not see the dog scene as a proactive move only, more of her bundling like sleeping in the sun.

I'm finding out TONS o stuff about climaxes and literature and want to share just the climax stuff here, but it's amazing what there is to learn on this and it's so simple, too. Have just about enough time before this approaching storm to get this in, I hope:

"The subject of fiction is always characters in action, and if we use the word 'conflict' in a broad sense, we may say that it always involves conflict.

It may be an overt conflict between different people or a conflict within the mind of one person. Sometimes the antagonist--that which the leading character (or protagonist) is up against--is so generalized as to be personified EVIL, or the forces of change or Time.

The conflict always takes place against a particular background or setting which helps to define the terms of the conflict to sharpen its point, and may symbolically represent the antagonist istelf. When we speak of the setting of the story, we mean the physical scene, the surrounding circimstances, the climate and the weather, and so forth.

The conflict is always viewed from a particular angle. Sometimes the narrator, though not himself a character in the story, sees everything from the point of view of one of the characters, so that although he reports the thoughts of that character, he speaks of all the other characters as seen from the outside only. Sometimes the narrator switches from one character to another, and sometimes the narrator adopts a purely objective point of view from which he speaks externally of what all the characters do or say, but never directly reports the thoughts of any of them.

The conflict always has a dramatic shape. It may get under way more or less rapidly; that is, it may involve a shorter or longer exposition in which the characters are introduced, but before anything happens.

As a story moves on, the reader sometimes feels that the conflict is at a high degree of tension, when what is happening will be decisive for the future of some important character. At other times, the tension is relaxed, and the excitement is at a lower ebb. Such a moment of high tension, where threads previously laid down seem to be drawn together by the author, where some long-expected result is about to be consummated, where the action of the story reaches a turning point or a point where something vital will be revealed about the characters--such a point is the climax of the story."

--THEME AND FORM

OK now here are several new concepts carefully explained.

PROTAGONIST
ANTAGONIST
EXPOSITION
CLIMAX
NARRATOR
POINT OF VIEW
SETTING

Let's look at these while I go look denouement so we can be sure we're all talking about the same thing.

First off, what IS the CONFLICT in this story? We have identified IRONY and we don't want to lose that, because as I was typing this I had the strangest revelation of what Cusk might actually be doing here.

WHAT is the conflict in this story?

Let's start with that one!

Back when the storm goes,

Ginny

PS: Here's the last one for today: "DENOUEMENT:

(French: untying). In drama and fiction, the final unwinding of the tangled clements of hte plot, which ends the suspense; if follows the climax. the word is also applied to the resolution of complicated sets of actions in life."

That's from the READER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA.

Am getting confused again. Let's start with the things we can identify in THIS book, WHAT is the conflict??

I think the conflict here is "within the mind of one person." The external events are the product of Stella's internal conflict, but it is her struggle with what she's done, with her attempt at escape, with her attempt to find and live the country life, that drives the novel forward.

Sarah: I know we enter the conflict (or mental strain, anyway) immediately, from the first line: "I was to take the 4 o'clock train..."

It's obvious she's leaving and such words as "short notice," and "unnatural," "anxiety," and "inhospitible" all on the first page, give sort of a hint that this is going to be fraught with tension. Then on page 3 we have the letters, and we're OFF! On page 5 she talks about leaving "no trace."

So if we take the conflict to exist in her own mind, between herself and her family, her husband, her present life, then can we say what she encountered in the country is a product of her own mind?

Maybe if she hadn't been so overcome with her own concerns she might have asked more firmly for a description of her duties? Her wages? Her eating arrangements? Do we have any clue why she went off, sold her flat and left with no money save a small amount?

IS the book, then, not so much about the strange life and people of the country but her own failure to adapt due to her own flawed mental processes?

If the conflict exists in her own mind then we need to look at what THEME and FORM called the build up to the anticipated resolution of these problems? Hmmm. Barbara, I'm beginning to think you were right, but want to reread it for myself.

Is it possible that, drenched in irony as it is, that Cusk decided to have an ironic climax, too?

Or does it not have a climax at all! hahahahahahaha

BOY this one is a tough nut to crack!hahahahah

Let's write Cusk and ask!

Ginny

Yes Sarah, the tension seems to emanate from Stella. I feel tension untill Stella enters the party dining room at the end. The tension for me seems to be relieved when she is accepted and seated at the table. The 'unwinding' when Martin in his wheelchair is wheeled next to her. For me that fit, in that he has been her champion, urging her to new behavior through out. The holding of hands and Stella choosing to eat with her left hand raised the tension a little again and then I went easy saying, of course.

As I see it, Cusk is illuminating two thesies - family warts and all and courage to face your life, your actions, yourself.

The dog scenerio being just one more incident that Stella wants to hide from. Stella feels shame, wants to make believe she was not involved with what happened, walks away hoping no one saw her just as she walks away from the other happenings in her life that have made her uncomfortable. There is tension between Stella and the country; everyone she encounters in the story; and nearly every task she embarks including the champagne and the clumsy unbrella as well as, hearing Mark discover her in the pool mentioning Edward; the last chapter Pamela learns she has a husband by shrieking and Stella talking to Martin, that his parents have made up their mind. The tension is still there as he tells her she must face things and to 'Hurry up they've already gone to dinner'. The first words of true delight and calmness seem to be, 'We had entered the dining room, a room I had never been in before,...'

OK what do y'all see and think - wow I really like this - having to analyze and learning the tools of analyzing the books we read. 3 Chears for Cusk - her off the wall writing allowed us to question and learn techniques we will use again and again. Than you Ginny for finding this stuff - boy you are really raising the bar for us.

According to my copy of BLOOMSBURY Gudies to English Literature THE NOVEL
Irony From the Greek: 'dissimulation'. A form of expression by which the writer intends his meaningto be understood differently and less favourably, in contrast to his overt statement: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. The opening sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is to be understood as meaning that the appearance of such a young man in a neighbourhood inspires very strong wishes in the hearts of mothers of unmarried daughters, and that these wishes cause the mothers to behave as though the statement were indeed a fact.

Other devises the Cusk uses when writing her comic drama:
litotes Emphatic expression through an ironical negative, eg'She's no beauty', meaning that the woman is ugly.
MalapropismA comic misuse of language, usually by a person who is both pretentious and ignorant. The term derives from the characer Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan's play The Rivals(1775). This comic devie had been used by Shakespeare in the portrayal of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.
and finally Meiosis Understatement, used as a deliberate method of emphasis by irony, eg "Would you like to be rich?' - ' I should rather think so!'

Ginny, I am confused as to the difference between the PROTAGONIST and the ANTAGONIST. Could you further explain please?

ME?? hahahahaha, I'm still thinking about meiosis, sounds like a plant disease!

I thought the Protagonist is the hero or central character of the piece and the antagonist the opposing force or forces, but I'll sure go look them up and be sure, in a different book.

Yes, now, a point that you make also, remember how many times Stella sort of "hoped" that something would go away? Even in the case of the dog, she "hoped" that the dog would magically revive.

So if we think the conflict is her own flawed thinking then we need to start there, as she's hoping the dog might magically resurrect itself or never have happened, to find the actual climax of the thing.

You know, this is driving me nuts. I HATE, absolutely HATE not to know instantly, but as you say, Barb, it never hurts for the bar to raise up a little, I just hope that when we finally decide what it is, I will not have to run under it! hahahahahah

OH hahhaahahaha

Ginny

Look at this super thing that Pat W sent me? It's all the terms you'd want defined!! We need to put it in the heading somewhere of the Books: Dictionary of Literary Terms .

Thanks so much, Pat W!! That's wonderful!!

Back in a mo, when the going gets tough, the tough go get a bag of jelly beans!

Ginny

I got it! I got it I got it I got it, I think!! And I think we're all right! Now, how can that be?

Here's my theory, what do you think?

OK, on the dog episode, you remember this followed her dream of being pecked by birds? And her vision of people peering through bars on London streets, and her dream of Ed as a child, and having to explain to him and his being in a wheelchair?

OK so she goes and gets the champagne, but still in nightmare mode, the cork flies out, she gets covered, and she makes the decision to sit in the sun and drink champagne, but tempers it for a change with the desire to get the umbrella, stabs the dog, goes forward to put up the umbrella and swim in the pool, and on page 320 is still expecting the dog scene to magically reappear "so forceful was my denial of it, that I had honestly expected to discover that I had imagined it, or at least that it had been negated by some greater and more rational force..." so she's still in denial, stumbling through her life.

Then she goes swimming in the pool, "The thread of my time in the country semed all at once to snap, and I drifted away from the closely knitted stump of the past week, up to some higher region from where all the things of life appeared visible but remote, as the swimming pool floor was to me now." (p. 321) She then, on page 322, revisits the dog but he's still "dead." "I felt a sense of frustration at the resilience of this obstacle to my happiness, for again I had entertained the curious hope that the incident would have been erased, and indeed might still be if I waited long enough."

So Stella is still the Queen of Denial. But one thing changes that, and it's not her doing: she falls or faints into the pool and is rescued, and her rescuer is Mark. (page 327)

Mark knows Stella AND Edward and the beans are spilled. Stella is revealed. She can no longer hide anything and almost immediately she begins to make decisions to change her life, instead of banging around through it like a ball in a pinball machine:

Notice: The dog resurrects itself by magic. She complains immediately and for the first time to Martin: "I was hungry!" (page 333) and "I just don't have any money!....no, I mean I really don't have any. They--your parents haven't paid me yet."

This is the first time Stella has taken a direct step to confront her problems, in my opinion. Martin immediately tells her "Everyone has to face things. It's the only way," when she complains she can't face them all, "Mark, and your sister and your parents...." (page 334). But she has no choice because Mark will have revealed all anyway.

Here's where Cusk falls short and has too many denouements or incidental and confusing unravelings of the plot. We've got her entering the dining room and her new place at the table and her "facing the family." But she, herself did nothing whatsoever but be physically present unless I missed something UNTIL a family fight happens and she takes positive action to do something when Pamela asks, "Would someone mind giving me a hand?....I will, I said." (page 339).

At that point Stella makes the decision to be proactive in her own life instead of reactive and the entire tenor of the book shifts: Pamela smiles at her, she attains her goal of BELONGING and having someone to FIT IN WITH, "As I reached over each shoulder to retrieve a plate, I seemed to be dipping briefly into the charged aura of another human being, tasting their incredible autonomy." (page 339). Even Millie the beautiful, shrinks back from Stella's new presence "as if she were too delicate and fragile to withstand it."

Then, chatting as equals with Pamela in the kitchen when asked about her family, she replies, "I had a brother who died," and the spell is broken forever. Denouement. She sits down on the floor with the hot dish and is "aware of the most remarkable silence; not in the house, but in myself. The roar of the past week had ceased. I was quiet. I was quiet inside." (Page 340).

That's the final resolution of the conflict, but I do think the climax was her recognition by Mark. Had he not come along, I believe she would have continued as she started until she fled that scene, too. As it is, she appears to be about to stay on.

I believe the book is flawed by too many red herrings, indecisions by the author as to what the actual conflict IS, in the form of dreams, etc., but I also think, as we have noted before, that Cusk will be a major force. I love the way she writes. I'll give this one a 8 out of 10 just for the writing and the memorable scenes and the things I can relate to alone!

What do YOU think of my theory??

Ginny

This book is a thinking book. No easy read. Although I have enjoyed it and especially Rachel Cusk's style of writing, I don't think I want to read another one too soon. Cusk has certainly made Stella a real person, not just a fictional character, she has all the flaws, temptations and misadventures that we all have in our lives. Often times I find myself thinking I have been there. I can remember instances in my growing up years, where I was teased and made a brunt of a joke. But, I survived 4 older brothers and I am better off because of it. I am enjoying the book and especially the people that I meet. I even like Martin.

Yah Ginny, great job! - I too have been rereading and mulling - there definatly is a change after the dog but, I couldn't put my finger on it. In fact she delays her swim because of the dog. Where the swim and the overdrinking of the champaigne seem to be the cause of her landing on the bottom of the pool, the dog guilt is just hanging out there as an infringement on the line of happenings. And then the dog resurrecting itself made no sense to me. All I could think was, Why all that was there except to further the irony of her pleasent day, finally having that sought after and dreamed about swim, with the pool to herself and bamb what was to be pleasent is another slam of the opposite - she wounds or thinks she has killed the dog! Ginny you have made sense out of it for me - wonderful.

Dog the conservative, watchful, philosophical principle of life, the keeper of boundaries between this world and the next, the dog sometimes accompanies the Good Shepherd and usually is the companion of healers and huntresses.

Yes, Mark is almost like a returning Edward which just would not have fit any form of logic how Edward could have shown up on the scene. Plus Mark knowing Edward gave the story a little pow. From then on you are right Ginny, Stella just gradually comes into her power and gradually 'guts-up' to who she is, what she needs, and starts honoring herself pursuing as a huntress her worldly ends.

So I guess the dog is the pivotel point, almost like a Christ dying for her sins thing and being resurrected after Stella's first Hallelujah.

Wow Ginny, this was a struggle for such a slim off-the-wall book. I really liked it though, a lot - shoot I'll give it a 9. Yes, we had to stretch and dig to put it together. Some of the stretching, I think, comes from a cultural difference that, although the Brits and Americans speak English, our frame of references for cultural buttons of character discription, are different. Cusk is really so typical comedic with this book. In that so often, it takes awhile to get the irony that we knee-jerk laugh at the situation when the comic first delivers the diolague.

Yes, I really liked this book - a great message done in such a fun way that I didn't feel the need to turn to some deep philosopher to get it.