The Country Life

A Novel

By: Rachel Cusk

Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award

The Country Life, Rachel Cusk’s third novel, is a rich and subtle story about embarrassment, awkwardness, and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises.

"Calamity Jane Eyre" arrives at "Cold Comfort Farm" when a hapless young woman with a mysterious past takes a job with an eccentric family of British gentry; a brilliant comedy of manners and identity by a Whitbread-winning young author.

Stella Benson, eager to change her life, answers a classified ad and arrives in a tiny Sussex village that's home to a family slightly larger than life. Stella's hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them--as au pair to their irascible son Martin--is undeniably low. What drove her to leave home, job, and life in London for such rural ignominy? Why has she severed all ties with her family? Why is she so reluctant to discuss her past? And who, exactly, is Edward?

The Country Life is a rich and subtle novel about embarrassment, awkwardness, and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises. Rachel Cusk, widely acclaimed in England, makes her American debut with an utterly charming, captivating novel about one young woman's adventures in self-discovery.

“A brilliant oxymoron—a serious farce . . . Cusk’s ability to keep us interested in innumerable human collisions is uncanny.” —The New Yorker

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Critic reviews

“That rare thing: a novel that makes you laugh out loud and that you put down with regret.” —London Literary Review

“Like the novels of Evelyn Waugh or Stella Gibbons, The Country Life has a moral core, meticulously disguised by comedy. Cusk is a highly interesting, original writer, and, more unusually, she is a joy to read.” —Helen Dunmore, The London Times

“Clever, funny, and original . . . Acutely observed, Cusk's rural ride is a fine entertainment, and one which packs a much darker and subtler punch than it at first promises.” —Alex Clark, The Guardian

“An extraordinary blend of comedy and menace . . . . A tour-de-force against the odds and contains--just for the record--the most unexpected single line I have ever read in a work of fiction.” —Lawrence Norfolk