Living alone in New York, Frannie teaches creative writing to a motley bunch of students, and secretly compiles a dictionary of street slang: virginia, n., vagina; snapper, n., vagina; brasole, n., vagina.
One evening at a bar, she stumbles upon a man, his face in shadow, a tattoon on his wrist, a woman kneeling between his legs. A week later a detective shows up at her door. The woman’s body has been discovered in the park across the street.
Soon Frannie is propelled into a sexual liaison that tests the limits of her safety and desires, as she begins a terrifying descent into the dark places that reside deep within her.
One evening at a bar, she stumbles upon a man, his face in shadow, a tattoon on his wrist, a woman kneeling between his legs. A week later a detective shows up at her door. The woman’s body has been discovered in the park across the street.
Soon Frannie is propelled into a sexual liaison that tests the limits of her safety and desires, as she begins a terrifying descent into the dark places that reside deep within her.
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Reviews
Brutal, witty and electrifying, this is one of the best and bleakest thrillers I've ever read. As stylish as Chandler, as savage as Dworkin, its uncompromising portrait of the erotic dynamic between men and women makes it essential reading in the dark waters of the 21st century.
Imagine Gone Girl had it been co-written by Mary Gaitskill and Lydia Davis and you're heading in the right direction ... We need books like In the Cut now not simply because it's a cult classic, both timeless and timely, nor even for hope in the dark, but to allow us to articulate that darkness.
IN THE CUT is, like the film, deeply, achingly erotic; not in spite of, but because of its acknowledgement that violence hovers all around... IN THE CUT is a thriller, and it is laced with fantasy. But it's horribly, beautifully real.
In the Cut shocks in a way I'd forgotten was possible. It is taut and filthy and beautifully written.
This book will keep you up all night and give you chills. Both relentlessly menacing and transgressively brilliant, In the Cut is a twisty, nerve-shredding reading experience. A rare breed of literary thriller that manages to be deeply disturbing, violently erotic, and truly unforgettable.
IN THE CUT works because it plays on some of our darkest and most realistic fears, forcing us to consider whether our suspicion of men in individual cases is warranted, or rather the product of deep-seated anxieties... If Sex and the City, which aired three years after IN THE CUT was first published, explored the complications of women's sexual liberation, then Moore's novel explores its dangers
A streamlined and elegant meditation on language, sexuality and violence. Flawless.
Horrific, the sexiest book ever, vile, devastatingly true, not for the faint hearted.
I am in awe of In the Cut, a book about violence and sexuality that pays meticulous attention to language in a sharp, sardonic voice that calls to mind Lorrie Moore and Lydia Davis. It is extraordinarily unrestricted about female desire and sexuality, a completely propulsive reading experience and simply one of my favourite books.
A true original ... Disturbingly dark, explosively violent, powerfully erotic and brilliantly written.
A timely rebuke to the antiseptic quality of much of today's crime fiction. It is a short, nasty thriller that is badly underrated
In the Cut resonates anew in a culture sharply attuned to the violation of female bodies ... Moore's deadpan prose is just extraordinary... The final scene is unlike any written in a modern novel... feels newly provocative in the era of Me Too.
Not a word is wasted in this examination of one woman's sexual odyssey as Moore builds to a shattering climax.
Frannie's adventures in sex, language and power are as dangerous as the city she is consumed by. Deep red and hot as hell, In the Cut is one of the most x-rated, unforgettable examinations of straight, white female fragility, its depravities and desires, but above all, its breathtaking certainty of its own innocence, that I have ever read.
'You could describe IN THE CUT as an erotic thriller, and you wouldn't exactly be wrong, because it's certainly that; but it's also an uncompromising excavation of the darker reaches of female desire, and a uncomfortably heightened depiction of what it is like for a woman to feel endlessly watched and menaced by men. Its ending is also one of the most devastating things I have ever read.'
Strange, uncomfortable, compelling, shocking, hot, scary. The scariness of the book arises from what feels like being trapped in the protagonist's head - the way she treats the people around her like specimens, as though she's conducting a forensic autopsy on the world.
The bold, feminist psychosexual thriller you need to read now ... How I felt reading In The Cut: titillated, feverish and ravenous ... I know I will be sending copies to friends who are ready to talk about what justice looks like now, how our sex lives might look in the future, and whether the violence that has conditioned so many women's lives will ever end.
A gorgeously written, pitch-black fever dream of a novel ... Hot and claustrophobic ... I was scandalised and entranced by its gruesome violence, its genuinely sexy sex scenes ... Thrilling, radical and peculiarly permissive. It also has one of the most stark and bleak, yet beautifully written endings, of any book I have ever read. It has so much to say about the ways in which women are permitted to exist in the world - a topic perhaps more relevant now than when it was first published, and yet, I've not encountered anything like it since.
Riding shotgun on Frannie's chaotic descent is a difficult experience to shake. In the Cut is voyeuristic in content and by design, making us more queasily complicit with every page turned (and they turn fast).
In The Cut is surely one of the most underrated books of all time. Moore navigates the claustrophobic streets of a seedy New York and the dark, hidden avenues of female desire with equal grace, rewriting the thriller template with an elegance that proves totally devastating. She looks unflinchingly towards the darkness and finds beauty there as well as old, inescapable truths about what it means to be a reckless woman in a world of dangerous men.
I've never read anything like IN THE CUT. The lethal precision, repulsive and propulsive, cerebral and visceral, makes it the kind of intelligent thriller that takes you over completely. Seductively at first, then in a chokehold. When I finished I was ready to pass out.
I don't think I've enjoyed and devoured a book like this since ever. I couldn't put it down.
In the Cut blew me away. It's truly extraordinary. The writing is so precise and perceptive, the plot so disturbing, frightening and erotic all at once. It reminds me of Elena Ferrante's Troubling Love - this profoundly clever woman with her life in her hands.
Through the eyes of her narrator-voyeur, Susanna Moore leads us down to the basements and subways of her noirish New York. Here, the distinctions between pleasure and violence begin to blur; in this world, as in ours, the fact alone of femaleness is enough to elicit danger. Claustrophobic, disorienting, nauseating - In The Cut takes you to the place where desire transforms into fear, and it holds you there.
