In The Fold by Rachel Cusk

Have just finished reading In The Fold by Rachel Cusk. It was a bit disjointed at first, but as the story progresses you realise this is part of the structure. Nothing much happens in the book – the narrator (first person) has a Grand-Meaulnes-experience at an impressionable moment of his youth and uses it as the aspirational theme of his life (an example of self-actualisation, someone inventing the person they want to become). Later he revisits the place and family that had so inspired him, to find all his illusions undermined by a disappointing reality.

Rachel Cusk is a fine writer, and she must be recording her descriptions and dialogue from life, since they ring so true. In particular I liked the way she conveyed the sense of separateness that comes from living on a farm (not really isolation, more a feeling that a farm is a little world within itself, and that nothing in the outside world has any relevance). She also draws some very funny portraits of adults from the 1960s generation (examples of staggering selfishness combined with a capacity for self-deception and self-justification).

The 1960s generation is a loose term that refers to people who were in their 20s and 30s anytime between 1955 and 1980. Generally portrayed as an exciting period of peace movements, free love and experimental lifestyles, subsequent generations have been critical of the selfish way in which the 60s generation consumed resources in excessive post-war materialism (as one commentator raged: “this country experienced one thousand years of continuous expansion, and THAT generation wasted it all in a decade”). Apologists for the period point to the necessity of youth rebellion as a response to the crushing moral authority of their parents (“there was no way they could ever live up to the expectations of those who had won the Second World War – their only option was to destroy society so they could find some room to live”).

Marketing footnote: the 60s generation are now entering retirement and are being segmented as SKI-ers (SKI meaning Spending the Kids’ Inheritance – typically cashing-in family assets and using the money to fund a conspicuous level of consumption).