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The Bradshaw Variations (2009)

by Rachel Cusk(Favorite Author)

3.08 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0571233589 (ISBN13: 9780571233588)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Faber & Faber

review 1: I love how Rachel Cusk dives straight under the surface of life, and nowhere more so than in this novel, a subtle examination of what it's like to be English and middle class. She creates just enough distance between character and reader that we feel a little like observers from outer space, examining creatures we rather like but are not entirely sure we understand. Full of delicious details that transcend the events and dilemmas of a fairly bourgeois family set up - everything feels sharper, more crystalline, than in real life.There's some painful truths buried in these pages: "Claudia remembers, when Lottie was born, the prospect of self-sacrifice coming into view like a landscape seen from an approaching train; she remembers the steady unfolding of it, a place she had n... moreever seen before in her life, and herself inescapably bound for it; and then after a while the realisation, pieced together from numerous clues, that this was where her mother had lived all along."This isn't an action novel. It most assuredly puts character, description and observation firmly above plot, but offers diligent readers all the rewards of a voyeur, as Cusk's inquisitive, almost inappropriately intimate, insights offer a rare window into the inner workings of other people's lives - and often our own.
review 2: Although the writing is beautiful with evocative language and imagery, I found this overall to be a disheartening read. It is primarily a collection of random glimpses into the psyches of a group of characters who are related to one another by blood or marriage, but not by any discernible affection. All seem to be relentlessly self-obsessed; they float through privileged yet mundane lives, pitying themselves for their own purposelessness, rehearsing negativity, mired in disappointment. Though at 234 pages the novel should be a quick read, I couldn't wait to be finished and escape the Bradshaw's black hole of a world. Several times I came very close to giving up on it, and certainly don't feel that anything was gained by seeing it through. less

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