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Damn you, Rachel Cusk. This book was absolutely infuriating. As I was reading it, I kept telling myself that I hated it. And so, I burned through it in a a little more than 24 hours. It bears little resemblance to any other novel I've ever read. The characters seem vague and unformed, but they come

Reading Outline is like spying on an author in the process of auditioning characters for a future novel. In other words it is indeed an outline, an outline for a work that it still shadowy in the writer’s mind. Cusk interviews her potential characters and lets them tell her emotionally pivotal stori Leggi tutto

the entire universe conspired for me to not like this book, and i liked it anyway. by which i mean, i read this book in what i imagine is the worst possible way: i picked it up, read 2/3 of it, forgot i was reading it, allowed several months to pass, and then was fully surprised / confused when to se Leggi tutto

Mellifluous with a beautifully honed thematic core. The tone nimbly alternates between black despair and forlornness and subtle humor. If E.M. Forster excelled at intrusive narrators, always commenting on events, Rachel Cusk’s narrator here might be called unintrusive for the way she hangs back and Leggi tutto

“… this was a story in which I sensed the truth was being sacrificed to the narrator’s desire to win.” How do we piece together the stories we tell one another? Aren’t all of our stories inherently about the way we perceive events and other people? If the narrative had been told from another’s point Leggi tutto