Synopses & Reviews
The Lucky Ones is a novel about creating and sustaining life during times of great transformation. The five people whose lives converge here are also haunted by family -- the longing for love, the struggle to connect.
A young pregnant mother wrestles with utterly changed circumstances; a new father searches for a sign of the man he used to be; a daughter yearns for a lost childhood; and a mother reaches out in bewilderment to a child she can't fully understand. Accidental connections and overlapping relationships build a complex family portrait: all are linked by the elemental impact of children on adult lives.
This profound evocation of family and its magnetic bonds reveals the mysterious forces that separate us from those we love and bind us to what we no longer understand.
The Lucky Ones will stop you cold with its startling precision and power. Demonstrating a rare gift for illuminating "the bustling concourses of life" without sacrificing emotional depth or complexity, this rare and stunning novel confirms Rachel Cusk's place among our most incisive writers.
Review
"In her insightful fourth novel, Whitbread Award winner Cusk, author of Saving Agnes (1993), incisively cuts to the core of parenthood and its effect on marriage and female self-esteem.... Lacking the hilarity of her earlier works, this poignant, evocative novel is meant to be savored." Deborah Donovan, Booklist
Review
"[Rachels Cusks] prose is measured and poised. She shares Virginia Woolfs interest in making art out of the minutiae of womens inner monologues." Observer
Review
"Cusk is particularly good at delineating the tortuous relationships between mothers and daughters... Her toddlers tantrums are excruciatingly authentic and, through the detail of family life across the generations, she manages to raise important issues about selfhood and relationships, belonging and ownership, the roles and games people play as lovers, partners, children and parents." Times Literary Supplement (London)
Synopsis
The prize-winning author of "The Country Life" evokes the magnetic bonds of family in this story of accidental connections and overlapping relationships.
Synopsis
Artfully conceived and strongly executed, The Lucky Ones is a powerful and original work.
About the Author
Rachel Cusk is the Whitbread Awardwinning author of Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and, most recently, A Life's Work, her memoir about motherhood. She has been selected among Granta magazine's Best British Novelists of the Decade, and lives in Somerset, England.