In the Cut

‘Disturbingly dark, explosively violent, powerfully erotic and brilliantly written’ Sunday Times

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In the Cut

By: Susanna Moore

Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard

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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 tattoo 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.

Susanna MooreLaurence BouvardWeidenfeld & Nicolson

Detective

Mystery

Suspense

Thriller & Suspense

Women Sleuths

Women's Fiction

Fiction

Detective Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women Sleuths Women's Fiction Fiction

Critic reviews

A true original ... Disturbingly dark, explosively violent, powerfully erotic and brilliantly written.

Not a word is wasted in this examination of one woman's sexual odyssey as Moore builds to a shattering climax. (Sarah Hughes)

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. (Olivia Sudjic)

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.

'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.'

A timely rebuke to the antiseptic quality of much of today's crime fiction. It is a short, nasty thriller that is badly underrated

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. (Lara Williams)

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 (Natalie Olah)

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. (Katherine Angel)

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. (Olivia Laing, author of THE LONELY CITY and CRUDO)

Most relevant

I think I would have liked this book better if I’d physically read it. The accents were pretty grating and bordering on the offensive in my opinion! Made it seem like certain characters were caricatures. I wish they’d pushed the boat out and got a few more voice actors for this.