Twenty-nine year old Stella Benson plunges into the life of England's landed gentry as a companion to Martin Madden, a physically disabled teenager and the youngest member of a dysfunctional family of the first magnitude. Her unpracticed eye sees this position as a means of escape from her former London existence. Interwoven with descriptions of Stella's comic blunders, the enticing tangles of her past life are soon spread out against the backdrop of the English countryside. Readers may find similarities to the works of Anne Tyler, albeit on a smaller, more malicious scale, as they witness Stella's efforts to separate figure from ground amid the eccentric machinations of the Madden family. Cusk, is the winner of Britain's Whitbread Prize for her first novel, Saving Agnes. She makes a solid American debut with this skillful tale that is marked by well-drawn characters and a confident style that winks without apology at its Austenesque setting.
An edited version of this review appeared in Library Journal.
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