The Lucky Ones

by Rachel Cusk · 2005

In *The Lucky Ones*, Rachel Cusk weaves five intimately linked lives into a single, resonant portrait of family and the fragile ties that bind us. A young pregnant mother confronts the upheaval of impending motherhood; a newly single father searches for the man he once was; a teenage daughter longs for a childhood that slipped away; a mother reaches out, bewildered, to a child she can no longer understand; and a wife endures a secret suffering that threatens to unravel her marriage. At the heart of these intersecting narratives are Victor Porter, a campaigning lawyer, and his journalist wife Serena, whose marriage becomes a crucible where public duty, private desire, love and morality clash. Cusk’s precise, unflinching prose illuminates the bustling concourses of everyday life, revealing both its heartbreaking detachment and its unexpected tenderness. The novel is a profound meditation on how we create, sustain, and sometimes lose the lives we hold dear.