Books like The country life by Rachel Cusk

A novel about Emma Woodhouse, a young woman's struggles with matchmaking, misplaced pride, and the dangers of meddling in others' lives in 18th-century England.

A vision of post‑disaster society where gene‑spliced creatures roam and a fragile social order struggles to survive.

Emma, a bubbly businesswoman, reveals her most embarrassing secrets to a stranger on a plane, forcing her to confront her past and the reality of who she really is.

Bertie Wooster must steal a silver jug from Totleigh Towers, navigating Sir Watkyn Bassett, his daughter Madeline, and the nefarious Roderick Spode while Jeeves pulls him out of each absurd entanglement.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles follows Tess Durbeyfield, a rural woman from a poor family, as she confronts poverty, social injustice, and the rigid expectations of early 20th-century English society.

The Return of the Native follows Clym Yeobright, who returns to his Wessex home from Paris and soon marries the provocative Eustacia Vye, setting off a chain of personal turmoil.

A novelist leads an intensive creative‑writing course in hot Athens, guiding students through storytelling exercises while the conversations betray personal fantasies, anxieties, and regrets, gradually revealing her own journey of loss.

20s Young Woman’s Adventures in Old Edinburgh

A determined young woman's struggle to reconcile her life with her relationship and identity as a woman in a world that values traditional gender roles over individuality.

Evelina is a comic novel of manners that follows a young London debutante as she navigates the social world of 18th‑century England, learning wit, confidence, and the subtleties of love.

Jeeves is temporarily assigned as butler and factor to the ninth Earl of Rowcester, who, though title‑bearing, is broke. Together with the Earl, Jeeves runs a clandestine book‑making operation while a big‑game hunter threatens to wipe them out.

After a family breakup, a writer and her two sons relocate to London, where they confront new realities and questions of vulnerability, power, and renewal, forcing each to rebuild their lives from the ground up.

A lighthearted English comedy where an art specialist, Martin Clay, is hired by a boorish country squire to appraise his paintings. Suspecting one is a Bruegel, Clay spins a web of deceit to separate the masterpiece from its owner.

With his inimitable sense of humor and storytelling talent, New York Times bestselling author Michael Korda brings us this charming, hilarious, self-deprecating memoir of a city couple's new life in the country.At once entertaining, canny, and moving, Country Matters does for Dutchess County, New York, what Under the Tuscan Sun did for Tuscany. This witty memoir, replete with Korda's own line drawings, reads like a novel, as it chronicles the author's transformation from city slicker to full-time country gentleman, complete with tractors, horses, and a leaking roof.When he decides to take up residence in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Dutchess County, ninety miles north of New York City, Korda discovers what country life is really like:Owning pigs, more than owning horses, even more than owning the actual house, firmly anchored the Kordas as residents in the eyes of their Pleasant Valley neighbors. You may own your land, but without concertina barbed wire, or the 82nd Airborne on patrol, it's impossible to keep people off it! It's possible to line up major household repairs over a tuna melt sandwich. And everyone in the area is fully aware that Michael "don't know shit about septics."The locals are not particularly quick to accept these outsiders, and the couple's earliest interactions with their new neighbors provide constant entertainment, particularly when the Kordas discover that hunting season is a year-round event -- right on their own land! From their closest neighbors, mostly dairy farmers, to their unforgettable caretaker Harold Roe -- whose motto regarding the local flora is "Whack it all back! " -- the residents of Pleasant Valley eventually come to realize that the Kordas are more than mere weekenders.Sure to have readers in stitches, this is a book that has universal appeal for all who have ever dreamed of owning that perfect little place to escape to up in the country, or, more boldly, have done it.

Shirley Hazzard's poignant novel set amidst war and reconstruction in Japan, England, and Hong Kong explores themes of identity, redemption, and the human spirit's resilience after devastation.

Rachel Cusk reflects on the paradoxes of contemporary motherhood, blending humor, insight and personal experience to illuminate the rewards, hardships, and quiet revelations that shape a year of raising a baby in today’s world.