Arlington Park - What a great big pile of crap, worst book I have had the misfortune to pick up in a long long time

Obviously I am going to have to get myself a servant. I can't wait to break this to DW when she gets home from work.

I wouldn't have bought her books if they weren't reasonably readable.

On servants I suppose they help make writing possible. I'm writing this now because I've a servant in the house dealing with the children actually although I'm really working.

Starting to think 100x is Rachel's best mate.

I do think it's important to be disciplined, but having people to clean up your muck is a luxury. One which very few (mostly poorly-paid) artistic types can afford. Some of the best writers can write very convincingly about the ins and outs of day-to-day routine and it's important not to lose touch with that.

I'm going to have to read this "Arlington Park" now to see if it's as bad as people say...

Oh no she didn't - she called round at the WRONG time. Unless it was the right time, and she just hated by grandmother. Which is perfectly possible.

Also very important for writers to be disciplined. Very important that people who 'drop round' are turned away. I have every sympathy with that really.

My grandmother was once turned away by Nadine Gordimer because she called round at the right time. She was very put out.

No it's true - though not 'fawning acolytes' perhaps, but a commune of women who live with her and well, I guess, adore her. And why not, I say. Good on her.

Yes she's successful, because she's prolific and hard-working and her books are published and she keeps on going. Good for her. Doing dreary tasks does not a better writer make IMO. There is no moral value in housework, nor artistic merit either, it's just something that needs to be done. Writers need to sit at their desks to do their work, end of. What they do the rest of the time is up to them.

I suspect the reference to 'servants' was about her looking for a cleaner perhaps in that book, or a nanny? Not sure.

She's rather like Virginia Woolf I think. As uncompromising and unsavoury, and therefore interesting.

lol. When she 'wrote' SA not 'wrong' SA.

How successful is she? I thought she was a niche literary novelist myself.

Having to do the drudgery of daily things can actually make you a better writer. It was the reference to moaning about not being able to get servants which made me laugh. (WHo has "servants" in this day and age apart from the Queen? Image of turning up to see her and being met by her butler. "Ms Cusk is engaged in an Important Work of Literature. She caaan't be bothered bay the laykes you riff-raff. Now naff orf.")

(Doesn't Winterson have a team of fawning acolytes who minister to her every domestic need as well? Or is that a myth?)

Also she was young when she wrong Saving Agnes wasn't she? I remember reading it then too. I think she's allowed to make mistakes and be pretentious and be immature without being sneered at.

God. I appear to be her number one fan on this thread. How odd.

UQD - I was being completely serious. There's no reason to slate her because she doesn't do her own washing-up or clean her house or whatever. What's that about?

You don't get extra marks because you do the washing up you know. She's a successful novelist, it is her career - why should she be cleaning the floor as well if she can afford not to?

Agree Anna about pervading sense of doom. I think that's what she does. I think she is clever actually, and gloomy and serious - which is quite a rare commodity - and not very likeable.

Xenia - in R Cusk's earlier work, women do have careers - but they don't enjoy them .

No the women are inadequate because they don't pursue careers and are stupid enough to get lumbered at home with children. It's women who must take responsibility for situations they find themselves in which they don't like. not fair to blame their men. If they love it at home great. If they don't change things but don't do all this endless whingeing. More action, less talk needed from some of that kind of woman portrayed in the book.

I agree with the general despondency comment from Anna too. Women can do anything. They're strong, clever and have lots to give. They don't have to accept lives they don't like and most don't. They can take action and effect change and be happy... or thus says the Xenia optimist anyway.

Actually, now I think about it (and look at the R Cusk books in my bookcase), everything I have read of hers is depressing. A general sort of hopelessness about women's lives pervades her work.

I think I liked her earlier work because at that point in my life I had less control over my existence than I do now. Since I no longer have any feeling of powerlessness, maybe I just can't relate to her general despondency?

The more I read about "Arlington Park" the less I want to read it. So the men "go blithely off to work" according to one review. Rrrright. And there is a character called "Solly". Who the hell knows anyone called "Solly" in real life?

I read "Saving Agnes" years ago and it made so little impression on me I can't recall a single thing about it, except that the main character is called Agnes Day. Oh, chortle, chortle, Agnus Dei. Rachey-babes, you are so clever. Fuck off.

I think A Life's Work was depressing but then I think it was about post natal depression without being a self help or psychology book. That made it a bit of an oddball book.

I think she can write in the sense that she can describe things with fresh eyes but she doesn't have much to say apart from an expression of anger at women's lives.

ahundredtimes.... I hope you are not being entirely serious! Because I'm a writer and I don't have servants. I do my own washing-up!

Olive, this migh sound silly but I LOVED the descriptions, particularly the shopping centre. There isn't much of a plot, i agree. I found the narrative quite humorous in a dark, brooding sort of way.

LilianGish - thanks .

I'm working on perfecting the wording (in English and French) for that particular retort/put down. I find I often need it (if only inwardly to be said to myself at crucial moments ).

Well said Anna I completely agree with you.

Yes, but a lot of them get fed up at home because it's so boring there. I loved the giving birth process, the being pregnant, the holding and touching chidlren, the breastfeeding, loved all of that basic stuff very very much. Just never wanted to do it all day long.

I think she does describe well what she sees. Nt all women are as she describes but a good few are in a particular subset. Cannot now remember much about the book - they seemed to meet to chat, the various mothers and presumably someone or other had a marriage breakup and did one husband have an affair with the au pair?

And vindicates my view that it would be better if everyone did what makes them happy and/or what's best for their financial and family situation, and not moan at each other for doing the "wrong" thing.

Xenia - actually, she vindicates my view that many middle-class women have become so divorced from the biological realities of life that they labour under the illusions they are being cleverer and leading more fulfilling lives by marketing soap powder than by bringing up their children