Rachel Cusk Book Collections - Rachel Cusk Audiobook

Written by Rachel Cusk
Read by Antonia Beamish, Juanita McMahon, Jot Davies, Judith Boyd, Jenny Sterlin
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

The file contains :

Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation.

A masterly work of divorce and its consequences, Aftermath is a ruthless, rigorous record of the largely unwritten journey back to order from the chaos of separation.

In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk’s marriage of 10 years came to an end. Candid and revelatory, Aftermath chronicles the perilous journey as the author redefines herself and creates a new version of family life for her daughters. She discovers previously unknown strengths and freedoms, but also finds herself suddenly vulnerable to outsiders, unwelcome advice, social displacement, and the absence of a clear authority. The pressure to reconstruct a “normal” life for her daughters competes with the sense that nothing feels normal at all.

Aftermath is a classic: a masterly work in which the author, at her most ruthless and rigorous, charts the largely unwritten journey back to order from the chaos that is left when a family breaks apart.

Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
Release date: 10-05-21

The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy.

A vivid and elegant account of a family’s season abroad by one of our finest contemporary authors.

Casting off a northern winter and an orderly life, a family decides to sell everything and go to Italy to search for art and its meanings, for freedom from routine, for a different path into the future. The award-winning writer Rachel Cusk describes a three-month journey around the Italy of Raphael and rented villas, of the Piero della Francesca Trail and the tourist furnace of Amalfi, of soccer and the simple glories of pasta and gelato. With her husband and two children, Cusk uncovers the mystery of a foreign language, the perils and pleasures of unbelonging, and the startling thrill of discovery - at once historic and intimate.

Both sharp and humane in its exploration of the desire to travel and to escape, of art and its inspirations, of beauty and ugliness, and of the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity, The Last Supper is an astonishing memoir.

Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
Release date: 01-04-22

The Bradshaw Variations.

The seventh novel by the acclaimed author of the Outline trilogy, Rachel Cusk’s The Bradshaw Variations is a lyrical, subversive tale of a marriage unraveling.

Thomas Bradshaw and Tonie Swann are experiencing the classic symptoms of marriage in its middle years: comfortable house, happy enough daughter, and an eerie sense that life might be happening elsewhere. Then Tonie accepts a big promotion at work and Thomas agrees to become a stay-at-home dad. While Thomas is suddenly faced with the daily silence of an empty house, Tonie finds herself alive to previously unimagined possibilities. And at the head of the family, the aging Bradshaw parents continue their marital dynamic of bickering and petty undermining.

Narrated by: Juanita McMahon
Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
Release date: 09-14-21

A Life’s Work.

When first published in 2001, it divided female critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk’s children were taken into care, that was she was unfit to look after them. Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself and the book as protests grew about the its honest, gritty account of the misery of those early months.

It is a seminal, stand-out book on the complications of being an ambivalent mum in an age of white-washed, Annabel Karmel’d new families.

Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
Release date: 05-29-20

Coventry.

After the publication of Outline, Transit and Kudos - in which Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction - this writer of uncommon brilliance returns with a series of essays that offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her life’s work. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, this collection is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and rewarding to behold.

The result is a cumulative sense of how the frank, deeply intelligent sensibility - so evident in her stories and novels - reverberates in the wider context of Cusk’s literary process. Coventry grants its readers a rare opportunity to see a mind at work that will influence literature for time to come.

Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
Release date: 10-17-19

Saving Agnes.

Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award.

Agnes Day - subeditor, suburbanite, failure extraordinaire - has discovered disconcerting gaps in her general understanding of the world. Terminally middle class and incurably romantic, Agnes finds herself chronically confused by the most basic interactions. Life and love go on without her, but with a little façade she can pass herself off as a success. Beneath the fiction, however, the burden of truth becomes harder to bear.

Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
Release date: 10-29-20

In the Fold.

When eighteen-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury’s remote family home he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle.

Years later, when he marries the strong-willed, beautiful Rebecca, he is secretly hoping to create his own version of that free-thinking family, but after the birth of their first child, their marriage begins to flounder.

The chance to escape once more to his friend’s country house comes as a welcome relief, until he discovers a family changed, and his own romantic notions of country life begin to disintegrate . . .

Narrated by: Jot Davies
Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
Release date: 05-14-20

The Lucky Ones.

Vicky is nine months pregnant and in prison. As the days slip by, she wrestles with the terrible knowledge that her baby will be taken away.

Meanwhile her lawyer and his wife have moved to the country with their two children. Their arrival in the village sends ripples through a community that is to reevaluate the nature of family life, love, separation and death….

Narrated by: Judith Boyd
Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
Release date: 01-23-20

The Temporary.

Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party. Her beauty ignites a blaze of excitement in his troubled heart. But Francine is ravenous for attention, driven by a thirst for conquest, and when Ralph tries politely to extricate himself, he finds he is bound by chains of consequence from which it seems there is no escape.

The Temporary paints a merciless portrait of the cut and thrust of modern romance, work and life.

Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
Release date: 04-04-20

The Country Life.

Stella Benson sets off for Hilltop, a tiny Sussex village housing a family that is somewhat larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them, as au pair to their irascible son Martin - is undeniably low.

What could possibly have driven her to leave her home, job and life in London for such rural ignominy? Why has she severed all contact with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to talk about her past?

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.

Narrated by: Jenny Sterlin
Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
Release date: 01-20-21