Staging a House for Sale

The Bradshaw Variations

I guess Rachel Cusk doesn't watch Sex in the City or she'd have known to give her characters different last names. Bradshaw is taken! But Rachel Cusk does not seem to be watching much TV. Not like Lorrie Moore's whose book seemed jammed with pop cultural references, Cusk's writing is lovely and perfect. There is no TV or cable in Cusk's house, her writing exists in it's own rarified atmosphere. The book is about different people in the same family (Bradshaw), some of who are unpleasant and some who aren't ,or at least you're not sure what they are. It's told in short chapters that exist on their own which serves to make each of the characters lonely and distant.

She's such a good writer that in the end I forgave her that not much goes on in the book.

She herself wears old clogs, a poncho, flared cordoroy trousers. When Howard met Claudia she was still a student at art college. It is part of the mythology of Claudia and Howard's life that he carried her off before she could finish her degree.The myth makes it difficult to remember exactly what happened. Claudia has a painting studio at the bottom of the garden, a kind of memorial to her forsaken career. To Thomas her clothes are sysmbolic too, commemorative, like the uniform veterans wear on Remembrance Day to remind people of their sacrifices.

In the next to final chapters there is end a moment of high drama and then a new chapter starts. She leaves the high drama dangling without any closure at the end of the book and since, I doubt there is a Bradshaw Variations Part II in the works, not finishing the story seems much more pretentious a move than I would expect of Rachel Cusk. So maybe she is watching a little TV on the sly and hoping for a regular series with her use of cliffhangers.