There is a lot to chew on here. A reflection on a recently ended abusive relationship. How one can drift into intimate danger when loneliness and listlessness is larger than early red flags. Protagonist, Liine throws herself into gardening in an isolated house. Her relationship with the soil grows along with her understanding of self, of what lines she must draw around her.

By description alone, this book is right up my street. And Carolina Pihelgas’ prose is lovely in parts. She touches on big themes like climate change and war through the lens of this one woman recovering from years of violence.

These are all compelling and important subjects. And yet somehow, for me, the sum was not greater than its parts.

This is a slight book and still I felt like I was working through it for some time. In fact it took me more than two weeks to finish a book I would typically gobble up in two days.

This is a solid book, story and writing. I do think it will find it's English-language audience, but I’m afraid I just couldn’t connect with it.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance copy of the book in return for an honest review.

'The Cut Line' is beautiful, and harrowing, all at once. You can tell that this is a poet's novel: Pihelgas' words glide across the page, creating a slow release of horror, as Liine, the central character, reckons with the reverberations of abuse, and the increasing changes in the Estonian landscape. Most rewarding, are the dynamics between Liine, and nature: I particularly enjoyed 'The Cut Line''s depictions of the Estonian countryside.

Beautifully translated and beautifully written. I was initially surprised at how short this was, but having read it, I realised it was exactly the perfect length. Despite the subject matters tackled and the lingering sense of unease, I felt as though I was in the midst of an endless, comforting summer in that countryside, and the vivid imagery made me long for it. The reason for my rating is that I’m not sure if I would revisit this work or recommend it to others simply due to how closely I related to some of the uncomfortable things Liine went through. However, I did note down a ton of quotes and passages that I found beautiful or stuck with me and I’d like to keep in my memory.

The detail in this short read was tangible. The descriptions felt like the gardens and animals were jumping from the page. You could feel her emotions as you walked through them. I wanted to linger in each moment longer than they were written. A worthy read.

The Cut Line is a short but impactful novel. It is deeply introspective and expertly covers so many topics, like feminism, abusive relationships, climate change, and the impacts of militarism on rural communities and the environment. I also appreciate how the novel addresses Liine's abuser, using a first-person perspective that speaks directly to the audience. It took a bit getting used to in the beginning, but this perspective allowed the audience to understand the impact of her ex-boyfriend's abuse and the negative ramifications it has on her psyche. Furthermore, the prose is very beautiful and well-written. The audience could just get lost in Liine's connection with the farm and nature. I also empathized with her familial relationships and the grief of an unsuccesful partnership. The ending is bittersweet, but it is fitting for the story. Would highly recommend!

A short, heartwarming novel about a woman leaving a toxic relationship. It's a character-driven type of book, which I love.

I kind of went in blind for this one and it ended up being exactly what I needed. A really special read that has stayed with me.

This looks like a really interesting book, but with the new formatting for downloads, this arc won't open on my computer as a download and is not available in the Netgalley on-site reader. I will be watching for a copy of this book in print or ebook format from the library or out in the wild, but until/unless it is available for the Netgalley Reader (not the app, which requires a smartphone, which I don't have) this is as much as I can do with this arc right now.

The prose was beautiful. A tale of a woman going back to the counteyside as an escape and redemption from her broken city life. I loved how she got a hold on her life, and the little countryside and her family and the entire dynamics of the book. It was a great read!!

Carolina Pihelgas’s The Cut Line is a quietly arresting meditation on survival and self-reclamation. In lucid, poetic prose, she follows Liine, a woman retreating to a rural cottage after years of abuse, where the act of rebuilding a home becomes a slow reckoning with memory and identity. Set against a landscape marked by environmental decay and military presence, the novel deftly entwines the personal and political. Subtle, precise, and deeply atmospheric, The Cut Line is a haunting elegy for lost time—and a quiet hymn to resilience.

The Cut Line by Carolina Pihelgas is set during a sweltering Estonian summer, where Liine retreats to a remote farmstead to finally end a toxic 14-year relationship. Alone, she faces her pain and the threats from her ex while surrounded by nature, using hard physical work and gardening as a way to heal.

The story carries an ever-present sense of dread, heightened by vivid descriptions of climate change’s harsh effects—drought and heat—and the ominous presence of a nearby NATO base preparing for conflict. Explosions and gunfire echo in the distance, mirroring Liine’s inner turmoil as she tries to rebuild her life.

What struck me most was how the natural world mirrors Liine’s slow but steady transformation. As summer unfolds, her fear, grief, and anger gradually give way to hope and renewal. The Cut Line is a deeply moving and atmospheric exploration of trauma, resilience, and the possibility of healing.

I found this book quietly powerful, a thoughtful reflection on both personal and global struggles that lingers long after the last page.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

A short, lyrical read that had my bugbear of no speech marks. A couple of times I stumbled over the words due to mistaking speech for introspection.
I’m still not sure what metaphor the coming war and the repossession of the house represents, but I’m sure there is on, I just haven’t worked it out.

Beautifully sparse, evocative prose, a slow-building untangling of grief and fear and hope. I don't usually like books so focused so heavily on a character's inner thoughts, but I was surprised at how easy and captivating a read this was. Really beautiful little book.

I expected an abstract and dreary book, and was pleasantly surprised and completely won over by this lyrical, atmospheric, moody and precise novel dissecting the fallout of emotional abuse. The Cut Line follows Liine, a thirtysomething woman healing from a breakup with a much older man who she had started dating as a teenager. There is something of I am a Fan about this, but much better executed, as Pihelgas' talent elevates the banal to something truly meditative and contemplative.

Liine leaves the city for her family's old rural home, uninhabited since the death of an older relative years ago. The home is close to a NATO base, and the war, the only war that matters if you have the misfortune of bordering Russia, is always humming through anything you do. Narratively, the plot of the novel concerns the encroaching expansion of the base into Liine's family land, and the ways in which the seemingly distant current war is coming close and closer every day.

I don't think any other novel I have read in English made it as clear that for the people at the forefront, it is the matter of when, not if. The generations living in the little house lived through first independence, the occupation, the years of post-Soviet independence and the looming threat exemplified by the war in Ukraine. Liine learns bits of their stories left behind in letters, fragments and the very house itself. The painful history and present of Estonia is not hammered down the reader's throat - Pihelgas is far too nuanced and intelligent for that. Instead, the looming sense of threat is a thread baked into the very being of the people in the fragmented stories Liine discovers, the stories of life despite the physical and cultural death the 20th century kept imposing on these people.

The story of Liine herself, a woman escaping from an abusive man who keeps telling her she is nothing without him, and no one would want her, works on multiple levels. Of course, first and foremost, it is a story of a woman finally discovering herself and having the courage to move on despite societal prejudices. A very telling scene is a dialogue with Liine's pushy mother who parrots her ex's ageist and sexist narrative. It is a story of generational differences and breaking the cycle, and a story of women keeping other women on the leash. This simple but multi-faceted story is told in such a precise and relatable language.

On a different level, Liine's escape from emotional abuse mirrors the story of her country. Domestic abuse is a metaphor often used to discuss Russia and its former colonies in feminist discourses of modern political circles, and the metaphor holds for the story of the Baltic countries as much as it does for the more obviously violent cases of Ukraine and Georgia. For decades, the prevalent discourse in Russia in relation to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania has been the sort of thing Liine's ex told her, almost word for word: you're not good enough for Europe, no one wants you there, what are you without ME. Nothing in the text directly comments on this, and I adored Pihelgas trust in her readers to interpret the text in so many different ways.

What an excellent novel, made for reading and re-reading.

Set in an eerily near future on the edge of a NATO base and a climate-cracked wilderness, the story follows Liine, a woman retreating to a solitary farmstead after fleeing a violent, 14-year relationship. What unfolds is a narrative of survival and a deeply physical, grounded reclamation of self in a world that seems to be unraveling in tandem with her.

The prose is stripped down yet profoundly sensory, full of the textures of labor: chopping wood, digging into dry soil, and bracing against distant military explosions that mirror her internal state. The dread that permeates the book is subtle but unrelenting, made all the more potent by the realism of its backdrop—scorched fields, vanishing water, and the ever-present hum of geopolitical threat.

This is not the sort of book I would normally enjoy. It is basically the inner thoughts of a woman who is escaping from an abusive past, into a ramshackle house in Estonia. The house is also under threat as is the country so there is no let up from menace. I would prefer more story and less angst.

The Cut Line was a short but impactful read. The author offers us a fascinating psychology study of a young woman trying to come to terms with her escape from a toxic relationship and find a way forward, rediscovering who she is and what she wants from life. Her personal development is mirrored in the run-down cottage she flees to, and as she fixes up parts of her temporary home, she also progresses her own revitalisation. Meanwhile the violence of her past is echoed in the presence of the nearby military base encroaching on the village. The prose was atmospheric and descriptive without being wordy, and the author managed to express beautifully Liine's journey of self-discovery and acceptance. I would certainly read more from this author in the future and I am giving this book 4.5 stars.

This was a BEAUTIFULLY written book. I especially loved her growth throughout the story. It made me want to know what happens next I posted a review on both Goodreads and StoryGraph.

The central character moves to an old, ramshackle cottage in the Estonian countryside after leaving a toxic relationship. The book is set in the near future and the countryside is struggling with drought and later with fierce storms as the impacts of climate change are felt. The countryside is not so peaceful as the cottage abuts a military training area.
The book is full of feelings as the young woman goes through the stages of grief with her ex and her complex relationship with her not so motherly-mother.
I'm not a woman and I have never experienced a toxic relationship. But I really felt the young woman's emotions, her strength and resolution to move forward.