"There were perhaps a hundred houses there, all like Adam's. In spite of the exertions of the tarmac, which wound and circled graaciously amid the porperties as though to give the impression that each was distinct and difficult to find, the development had a somewhat regimental appearance. When you glimpsed it from the town, its roofs and top-floor windows resembled the impassive heads of an invading army coming over the hill. Once there, however, a pleasant, almost dreamlike atmosphere prevailed. It was an atmosphere that arose from the expectation that absolutely nothing untward was going to occur" (94)."The bottles and jars of every conceivable size and shape suggested a world suspended partway between medicine and magic. I caught a glimpse of something called 'breast-firming cream.' I tried to imagine the orgy of self-improvement that routinely occurred here" (97)."She smiled rather rakishly, with one side of her mouth. THe other side reamined downturned, as though half of her were perpetually reminding the other half of occasions on which an optimistic approach to things had not paid off" (121)."Half a mile down the road, a man was driving a mud-splattered four-wheel motorbike along the verge with two scrappy dogs twisting around him, one on either side, like a pair of apostrophes" (134).
Cusk's fifth novel was long listed for the Booker Prize, an honor that somehow belies its good, but unspectacular, reviews. A work that wordsmiths will love for its dialogue, In the Fold speaks of youth, privilege, and disillusionment__but, unlike Gatsby in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Charles in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, Michael understands the deception of appearances. Praised for her limning of psychic and emotional complexity, Cusk establishes convincing stereotypes of wealth, just to tear them down and cast a revelatory light on the treachery of it all. A few critics, however, saw Michael as a "sneering" narrator who infuses the book with meanness (Spectator); others thought too little happened to too many people. In sum, the novel is depressing, to be sure, but it's a playful, biting comment on human relationships.This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
Do You like book In The Fold (2005)?
Well I managed to finish it! A young university student(Michael)is invited to his friend`s sister`s eighteenth birthday party, to be held on their farm called Egypt. The family are all a bit odd, and the party which never seems to start is suddenly over. Years later the Michael contacts his friend again and ends up taking his young son down to the farm to help with the lambing.Here he discovers that most of the family are really unpleasant. I found this book very wearisome, introspective and often pretenscious. It is billed as a black comedy, in my view it misses being either. Having said that there are some wonderful observations and some beautiful passages which help.
—Margaret
What a promising storyline, an appealing cover and an interesting start. Unfortunately the writing seems to fall into being a complete load of old bollocks!For example: 'On the contrary, Rick's gallery was constantly awash in an apparently inexhaustible fund of notoriety and success, and the more these two commodities could be observed in the infallible business of their synthesis, the clearer an impression of its elemental steadiness could be obtained.' p.30There's lots more of that too!The dialogue between characters is believable but then the ensuing paragraphs read as if Cusk has consulted the synonyms list for a 'better' word. It reads as being pretentious gobble-de-gook.
—Rachel
I'm not sure how to rate this -- it was objectively quite good, but I never quite got into it. It's like the most cynical possible take on Brideshead Revisited, combined with a critique of modern fakey plastic values. But Cusk also skewers modern pretentious concerns about "authenticity," so there's nothing (except maybe the narrator's relationship with his possibly autistic toddler) that's real. Perhaps that's why I didn't like it much -- there's little to like, although the people and incidents are always interesting and Cusk writes beautifully.
—Cathy
