review of fiction: results 1–4 of 4

Any reader who believes the suburbs to be a cultural and spiritual wasteland will have their prejudices confirmed. And yet, Cusk's great talent as a writer is to complicate these tired notions and make them fresh and engaging. Her Desperate Housewives are not stereotypes, but unique and sympathetic characters. Cusk is masterful at capturing the ordinary moments of family life.

Reading this novel renders one a fly on a digital wall, listening in as half-baked undergraduates urgently chat about everything from the role of repressed postwar frustration as a motivating factor for tentacle-rape manga porn to whether the word "beige" can signify the same thing to two people in two places. All of which, in less skilled treatment, could be unbearable, but Pelevin's secret is pacing.

This is the gift of the book, in the end, a balance between philosophy and poetry, helter-skelter wit and calm sensual pauses.

Like so many good books, Mother of Sorrows is about what one man has and does not have, and therefore, it is about the tragedy of desire that bridges the space between.