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Outline
A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language
A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives.
Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.
Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people's motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk's finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years.
A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year
Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail
A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives.
Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.
Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people's motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk's finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years.
A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year
Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail
257 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 14, 2014
4,866 people are currently reading
109k people want to read
About the author
Rachel Cusk
72books4,688followersRachel Cusk was born in Canada, and spent some of her childhood in Los Angeles, before her family returned to England, in 1974, when Cusk was 8 years old. She read English at New College, Oxford.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 8,023 reviews
December 23, 2015
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 through with periodic startling observations about life and human nature that hit me like a punch in the stomach. The "star system" here on ŷ is totally useless for this book. (Yeah, it's probably completely useless for every book, in truth, but that's another discussion.) I gave it four stars. What does that mean? Nothing. I hated it and loved it. Full of wisdom and completely meaningless. Irritating and boring, but a page-turner. And just like the book, my review makes no sense.
May 30, 2016
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 stories about themselves. She makes no other dramatic demands of them. They become like a Greek chorus of voices without a play.
A writer, unnamed until the penultimate chapter, travels to Athens to host a writing workshop. Each chapter either recounts a conversation with someone she meets or a group discussion with her writing class. If Cusk has an agenda, a unifying theme to these conversations it is the shredding of romantic illusion. Its principal agents, sexual attraction and parenthood, are both mercilessly called to account. Cusk, it becomes clear, had had enough of illusion. The narrator, bitter herself, extols the virtues of passivity as a philosophy of life. And by extension it’s as if Cusk is bored with creating the illusions necessary to write novels. She’s like the magician who can no longer be bothered to go through the charade of masking the tricks. She’s a writer letting us know how bored she is with the theatre of constructing novels. However boredom is never going to be the best mainspring inspiration for the creation of a novel.
There wasn’t enough contrast in the tone or thrust of the voices for me. There was a sense everyone was hired to conform to a preconceived and adamant argument. And as such there was no sense of discovery in the novel. Beneath the surface of this novel is a current of unresolved bitterness, belonging, you sense, to the author herself. One of the novel’s central premises is that every relationship is doomed to fail, to become little more than a distorting outline, or as one character puts it there’s “a disgust that exists indelibly between men and women and that you are always trying to purge with what you call frankness" . Frankly, that’s a melodramatic statement to me, a distortion of perspective caused by unresolved bitterness. And this bitterness, left in its pure state, prevents any possibility of evolution. Thus the novel ends as it begins, with little sense of a meaningful journey, with little resolution.
In short, it’s a novel that’s much easier to admire than to love. It’s very well written with some truly brilliant observations, it’s intelligent, it holds its focus. It’s also a novel that arouses the suspicion now and again that there might be a conceit involved, the presence of the emperor’s new clothes factor. I enjoyed reading it; at the same time I have a feeling I’ll remember nothing about it six months from now.
A writer, unnamed until the penultimate chapter, travels to Athens to host a writing workshop. Each chapter either recounts a conversation with someone she meets or a group discussion with her writing class. If Cusk has an agenda, a unifying theme to these conversations it is the shredding of romantic illusion. Its principal agents, sexual attraction and parenthood, are both mercilessly called to account. Cusk, it becomes clear, had had enough of illusion. The narrator, bitter herself, extols the virtues of passivity as a philosophy of life. And by extension it’s as if Cusk is bored with creating the illusions necessary to write novels. She’s like the magician who can no longer be bothered to go through the charade of masking the tricks. She’s a writer letting us know how bored she is with the theatre of constructing novels. However boredom is never going to be the best mainspring inspiration for the creation of a novel.
There wasn’t enough contrast in the tone or thrust of the voices for me. There was a sense everyone was hired to conform to a preconceived and adamant argument. And as such there was no sense of discovery in the novel. Beneath the surface of this novel is a current of unresolved bitterness, belonging, you sense, to the author herself. One of the novel’s central premises is that every relationship is doomed to fail, to become little more than a distorting outline, or as one character puts it there’s “a disgust that exists indelibly between men and women and that you are always trying to purge with what you call frankness" . Frankly, that’s a melodramatic statement to me, a distortion of perspective caused by unresolved bitterness. And this bitterness, left in its pure state, prevents any possibility of evolution. Thus the novel ends as it begins, with little sense of a meaningful journey, with little resolution.
In short, it’s a novel that’s much easier to admire than to love. It’s very well written with some truly brilliant observations, it’s intelligent, it holds its focus. It’s also a novel that arouses the suspicion now and again that there might be a conceit involved, the presence of the emperor’s new clothes factor. I enjoyed reading it; at the same time I have a feeling I’ll remember nothing about it six months from now.
April 10, 2024
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 see a bookmark in it.
i'm pretty sure that's not ideal.
it is also a very short book that is very dry, but more so it is excellent and brain-expanding at every moment. it's fascinating and enlightening.
the idea that we are outlines, with all of the people we meet and information we learn and situations we encounter surrounding us, and our existence being made up of our responses to this media, is so interesting. and the fact that this book is nearly 100% dialogue of the very kind that surrounds us, and we get very little information about our narrator at all, and yet feel that we come away knowing her...
divine.
i can't wait to read the sequel.
bottom line: more lit fic series, please!
-------------------
tbr review
trying to become a cool girl again
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 see a bookmark in it.
i'm pretty sure that's not ideal.
it is also a very short book that is very dry, but more so it is excellent and brain-expanding at every moment. it's fascinating and enlightening.
the idea that we are outlines, with all of the people we meet and information we learn and situations we encounter surrounding us, and our existence being made up of our responses to this media, is so interesting. and the fact that this book is nearly 100% dialogue of the very kind that surrounds us, and we get very little information about our narrator at all, and yet feel that we come away knowing her...
divine.
i can't wait to read the sequel.
bottom line: more lit fic series, please!
-------------------
tbr review
trying to become a cool girl again
January 11, 2015
In Outline, a writer named Faye (perhaps not unlike Rachel Cusk herself) travels to Athens for a few days to lead a writing workshop. Along the way, she engages in conversations with several people--her seatmate on the plane, other teachers and students in the workshop, friends she meets up with, friends those friends have brought along, et cetera. Sometimes Faye listens to these people without comment, sometimes she challenges them, sometimes she reveals something about herself. That's all. The novel is a collection of conversations.
In the wrong hands, this could be a disastrous idea for a book, but in the hands of a good writer, what could be more interesting? (In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing other good writers tackle this same idea using their own experiences and travels. This book would be very different if written by, say, Nick Hornby, or Margaret Atwood.) In this particular case, I felt like I became the narrator. It was me on the plane, on the boat, having conversations with these people, and walking the streets of Athens. The oppressive heat of the summer gave the book a languorous feel. I was very happy to get lost in it, and while I related to some characters more than others, I suspect this is the kind of book that will reveal more of itself (and more of you to yourself) if you go back to it after a number of years have gone by.
I can already hear the criticisms of this book: "It's boring." (It isn't.) "It's pretentious." (It's actually the furthest thing from pretentious--it's not trying to be anything other than what it is.) Or my favorite-least-favorite criticism of any book: "No one actually talks like this." I don't know if it's true that no one actually talks like this--I haven't met everyone in the world. But frankly, if I wanted to hear how people actually talk, I'd go hang out at the bus station. Most of the time, I'd rather be reading novels like this one.
In the wrong hands, this could be a disastrous idea for a book, but in the hands of a good writer, what could be more interesting? (In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing other good writers tackle this same idea using their own experiences and travels. This book would be very different if written by, say, Nick Hornby, or Margaret Atwood.) In this particular case, I felt like I became the narrator. It was me on the plane, on the boat, having conversations with these people, and walking the streets of Athens. The oppressive heat of the summer gave the book a languorous feel. I was very happy to get lost in it, and while I related to some characters more than others, I suspect this is the kind of book that will reveal more of itself (and more of you to yourself) if you go back to it after a number of years have gone by.
I can already hear the criticisms of this book: "It's boring." (It isn't.) "It's pretentious." (It's actually the furthest thing from pretentious--it's not trying to be anything other than what it is.) Or my favorite-least-favorite criticism of any book: "No one actually talks like this." I don't know if it's true that no one actually talks like this--I haven't met everyone in the world. But frankly, if I wanted to hear how people actually talk, I'd go hang out at the bus station. Most of the time, I'd rather be reading novels like this one.
December 6, 2022
UN MODO DIVERSO DI STARE AL MONDO
Quale magnifica lettura mi ha donato Rachel Cusk!
Un libro perfettamente naturale, che non mostra né gli ingranaggi della teoria né lo sforzo di essere contemporaneo e che finisce per essere un libro molto contemporaneo e non estraneo alla teoria.
Inizia su un aereo in volo da Heathrow ad Atene.
L’io narrante è una scrittrice, divorziata madre di due figli, che viene coinvolta in una conversazione dal suo vicino, un sessantenne greco discendente di una ricca famiglia greca, che per lavoro ha passato anni a Londra, e alle spalle ha tre divorzi, qualche figlio, traversie economiche.
”Resoconto� è ambientato principalmente ad Atene.
Il divorzio si ripete in queste pagine, sembra che tutti, tranne pochissimi, raccontati ma non presentati in diretta (come se a questi personaggi si dovesse riconoscere minor realtà), siano passati attraverso questo aspetto della vita. Spesso, più volte.
Altro aspetto che si ripete sono i figli, di matrimoni diversi, con percorsi diversi, per lo più sparsi nel mondo.
Cusk ha scritto un paio di memoir che non ho ancora letto nei quali ha raccontato la sua maternità e il suo divorzio diventando una figura di riferimento della “cattiva madre�.
Forse questo è il primo aspetto che spinge alcuni critici ad avvicinarla a Elena Ferrante. O forse perché anche qui il campionario umano di sesso maschile non è uno spettacolo. O magari l’accostamento viene fatto perché Resoconto è il primo titolo di una trilogia scritta a partire dal 2014 e terminata quest’anno (Transit nel 2016 e Kudos nel 2018).
La scrittrice che molto più avanti scopriremo chiamarsi Faye, ma della quale poco altro verremo a conoscere, si sta recando ad Atene per tenere un breve corso di scrittura creativa. Probabilmente quello che si suole definire stage.
Le due lezioni e i suoi studenti regalano due dei capitoli più belli e più importanti di questo breve magnifico romanzo:
La vita sembra così ricca quando la guardo con gli occhi dello scrittore, mentre la mia vita spesso appare sterile, come un arido pezzo di terra, dove per quanto io mi dia da fare non crescerà mai nulla.
Romanzo, secondo me, senza se e senza ma: anche se c’� chi invece per questo libro tira in ballo la morte del romanzo, quasi fosse una colpa di cui Rachel Cusk è responsabile. Mi pare che da diverso tempo un romanzo non sia solo una storia con un inizio, uno sviluppo, e una fine � è da un po� che sappiamo che in un romanzo non è indispensabile ci sia azione, che debbano per forza succedere delle cose. C’� spazio per molto altro nella categoria del romanzo. E Cusk scrive pagine di romanzo che non dimenticherò.
In questa forma di romanzo che si vuole definire non-romanzo ho percepito Cusk in buona compagnia: mi ha fatto tornare alla mente le narratrici della Didion, in particolare quelle di Diglielo da parte mia e Democracy, anche se Faye è meno presente; ho pensato a Un uomo di passaggio di Ben Lerner, a Elizabeth Costello di Coetzee.
E, se lo avessi già letto, immagino che aggiungerei alla collezione Città aperta di Teju Cole.
Morte del romanzo immagino perché in apparenza non esiste trama: sono pagine di conversazioni nate da incontri casuali.
Faye ce le riporta: è una brava ascoltatrice, ogni tanto cede alla tentazione della puntualizzazione, ma a lei si riesce a perdonare il ditino alzato puntiglioso.
Le persone che incontra, e frequenta, hanno una gran voglia di raccontarsi. Sembra un bell’esempio di comunicazione: se non che, a lei vengono rivolte poche domande, più per cortesia che per vero interesse, e quindi la comunicazione è sostanzialmente a senso unico, non scambio.
Aggiungendo il fatto che Faye non smania dalla voglia di parlare di sé, si arriva in fondo che di lei si vorrebbe saperne molto di più.
Alzarsi da tavola con ancora un po� di appetito è regola antica. Vale anche in letteratura, e con l’Arte in genere.
Come è ben emerso nel micro gdl che ha accompagnato questa lettura (@Patrizia e io), un punto controverso è la scelta del titolo italiano: Resoconto non solo non traduce il titolo originale, Outline, ma diventa proprio fuorviante in quanto l’essenza di questa narrazione mi pare soprattutto racchiusa in queste parole:
aveva cominciato a vedersi come una sagoma, un abbozzo, i cui contorni erano completi in ogni dettaglio mentre l’interno restava in bianco.
L’outline è appunto un contorno, un abbozzo, un profilo. Qualcosa di incompleto, e quindi, certo non un resoconto.
Qui sopra è Anne, altra scrittrice arrivata ad Atene per prendere il posto di Faye come insegnante nel corso, che si definisce. Ma anche la stessa Faye è tutto meno che un resoconto, rimane molto sfumata, e forse la sua narrazione è un tentativo di riempire il suo abbozzo con i racconti altrui.
Non avevo più alcun interesse per la letteratura come forma di snobismo o addirittura di autodefinizione; non avevo alcun desiderio di dimostrare che un libro era migliore di un altro, anzi, ero sempre più restia a parlare dei libri che mi capitava di apprezzare. Ciò che per esperienza personale sapevo essere vero mi sembrava ormai avulso dal processo di persuasione degli altri. Non volevo, non più, persuadere nessuno.
Scrivere, fare letteratura, mi pare coinvolga una notevole capacità di ascolto e osservazione. In questa ottica, Resoconto è grande letteratura.
[Mentre leggere è quintessenza dell’intimità: nessuna altra forma d’arte richiede altrettanta concentrazione e quindi altrettanta solitudine.]
Atene
Quale magnifica lettura mi ha donato Rachel Cusk!
Un libro perfettamente naturale, che non mostra né gli ingranaggi della teoria né lo sforzo di essere contemporaneo e che finisce per essere un libro molto contemporaneo e non estraneo alla teoria.
Inizia su un aereo in volo da Heathrow ad Atene.
L’io narrante è una scrittrice, divorziata madre di due figli, che viene coinvolta in una conversazione dal suo vicino, un sessantenne greco discendente di una ricca famiglia greca, che per lavoro ha passato anni a Londra, e alle spalle ha tre divorzi, qualche figlio, traversie economiche.
”Resoconto� è ambientato principalmente ad Atene.
Il divorzio si ripete in queste pagine, sembra che tutti, tranne pochissimi, raccontati ma non presentati in diretta (come se a questi personaggi si dovesse riconoscere minor realtà), siano passati attraverso questo aspetto della vita. Spesso, più volte.
Altro aspetto che si ripete sono i figli, di matrimoni diversi, con percorsi diversi, per lo più sparsi nel mondo.
Cusk ha scritto un paio di memoir che non ho ancora letto nei quali ha raccontato la sua maternità e il suo divorzio diventando una figura di riferimento della “cattiva madre�.
Forse questo è il primo aspetto che spinge alcuni critici ad avvicinarla a Elena Ferrante. O forse perché anche qui il campionario umano di sesso maschile non è uno spettacolo. O magari l’accostamento viene fatto perché Resoconto è il primo titolo di una trilogia scritta a partire dal 2014 e terminata quest’anno (Transit nel 2016 e Kudos nel 2018).
La scrittrice che molto più avanti scopriremo chiamarsi Faye, ma della quale poco altro verremo a conoscere, si sta recando ad Atene per tenere un breve corso di scrittura creativa. Probabilmente quello che si suole definire stage.
Le due lezioni e i suoi studenti regalano due dei capitoli più belli e più importanti di questo breve magnifico romanzo:
La vita sembra così ricca quando la guardo con gli occhi dello scrittore, mentre la mia vita spesso appare sterile, come un arido pezzo di terra, dove per quanto io mi dia da fare non crescerà mai nulla.
Romanzo, secondo me, senza se e senza ma: anche se c’� chi invece per questo libro tira in ballo la morte del romanzo, quasi fosse una colpa di cui Rachel Cusk è responsabile. Mi pare che da diverso tempo un romanzo non sia solo una storia con un inizio, uno sviluppo, e una fine � è da un po� che sappiamo che in un romanzo non è indispensabile ci sia azione, che debbano per forza succedere delle cose. C’� spazio per molto altro nella categoria del romanzo. E Cusk scrive pagine di romanzo che non dimenticherò.
In questa forma di romanzo che si vuole definire non-romanzo ho percepito Cusk in buona compagnia: mi ha fatto tornare alla mente le narratrici della Didion, in particolare quelle di Diglielo da parte mia e Democracy, anche se Faye è meno presente; ho pensato a Un uomo di passaggio di Ben Lerner, a Elizabeth Costello di Coetzee.
E, se lo avessi già letto, immagino che aggiungerei alla collezione Città aperta di Teju Cole.
Morte del romanzo immagino perché in apparenza non esiste trama: sono pagine di conversazioni nate da incontri casuali.
Faye ce le riporta: è una brava ascoltatrice, ogni tanto cede alla tentazione della puntualizzazione, ma a lei si riesce a perdonare il ditino alzato puntiglioso.
Le persone che incontra, e frequenta, hanno una gran voglia di raccontarsi. Sembra un bell’esempio di comunicazione: se non che, a lei vengono rivolte poche domande, più per cortesia che per vero interesse, e quindi la comunicazione è sostanzialmente a senso unico, non scambio.
Aggiungendo il fatto che Faye non smania dalla voglia di parlare di sé, si arriva in fondo che di lei si vorrebbe saperne molto di più.
Alzarsi da tavola con ancora un po� di appetito è regola antica. Vale anche in letteratura, e con l’Arte in genere.
Come è ben emerso nel micro gdl che ha accompagnato questa lettura (@Patrizia e io), un punto controverso è la scelta del titolo italiano: Resoconto non solo non traduce il titolo originale, Outline, ma diventa proprio fuorviante in quanto l’essenza di questa narrazione mi pare soprattutto racchiusa in queste parole:
aveva cominciato a vedersi come una sagoma, un abbozzo, i cui contorni erano completi in ogni dettaglio mentre l’interno restava in bianco.
L’outline è appunto un contorno, un abbozzo, un profilo. Qualcosa di incompleto, e quindi, certo non un resoconto.
Qui sopra è Anne, altra scrittrice arrivata ad Atene per prendere il posto di Faye come insegnante nel corso, che si definisce. Ma anche la stessa Faye è tutto meno che un resoconto, rimane molto sfumata, e forse la sua narrazione è un tentativo di riempire il suo abbozzo con i racconti altrui.
Non avevo più alcun interesse per la letteratura come forma di snobismo o addirittura di autodefinizione; non avevo alcun desiderio di dimostrare che un libro era migliore di un altro, anzi, ero sempre più restia a parlare dei libri che mi capitava di apprezzare. Ciò che per esperienza personale sapevo essere vero mi sembrava ormai avulso dal processo di persuasione degli altri. Non volevo, non più, persuadere nessuno.
Scrivere, fare letteratura, mi pare coinvolga una notevole capacità di ascolto e osservazione. In questa ottica, Resoconto è grande letteratura.
[Mentre leggere è quintessenza dell’intimità: nessuna altra forma d’arte richiede altrettanta concentrazione e quindi altrettanta solitudine.]
Atene
November 11, 2024
Mellifluous with a beautifully honed thematic core. The tone nimbly alternates between black despair and forlornness and subtle humor. If excelled at intrusive narrators, always commenting on events, Rachel Cusk’s narrator here might be called unintrusive for the way she hangs back and let’s others speak. One of the walking wounded herself, her damage manifests itself in a kind of unquestioning passivity. She’s going through the motions.
A divorced woman, English, she is a writer of middle age who is in Athens one hot summer to teach a writing workshop. A key motif here is of looking back and seeing that for many years you lived your life almost unconsciously, that time then simply elapsed and in retrospect you see it as freedom, yes, but you also see it as unfocused, almost rambling, free-style in essence—and this is something, a mindset, a way of being you could not adopt today if you tried, such being the indelibility of experience.
“When I looked at the family on the boat, I saw a vision of what I no longer had: I saw something, in other words, that wasn’t there. Those people were living in their moment, and though I could see it I could no more return to that moment than I could walk across the water that separated us. And of those two ways of living—living in the moment and living outside it—which is the more real?� (p. 75)
Later we meet a woman, Elena, who says “Very often I have felt that my relationships have no story, and the reason is because I have jumped ahead of myself, the way I used to turn the pages of a book to find out what happens in the final chapter. I want to know everything straight away. I want to know the content without living through the time span.� (p. 191) Here too is someone living outside the moment rather than in it. Since reading the book is the moment we live for. Thus Elena deprives her relationships of their essence, so busy is she trying to head off any surprises, any pain.
This is a brilliant novel. It’s astonishingly fresh. It reminds me in its compression and economy—not its style, nor its themes—of a few other exquisite books, including Ernest Hemingway’s best novel, , Per Petterson’s stark , and Willa Cather’s terse frontier fable .
A divorced woman, English, she is a writer of middle age who is in Athens one hot summer to teach a writing workshop. A key motif here is of looking back and seeing that for many years you lived your life almost unconsciously, that time then simply elapsed and in retrospect you see it as freedom, yes, but you also see it as unfocused, almost rambling, free-style in essence—and this is something, a mindset, a way of being you could not adopt today if you tried, such being the indelibility of experience.
“When I looked at the family on the boat, I saw a vision of what I no longer had: I saw something, in other words, that wasn’t there. Those people were living in their moment, and though I could see it I could no more return to that moment than I could walk across the water that separated us. And of those two ways of living—living in the moment and living outside it—which is the more real?� (p. 75)
Later we meet a woman, Elena, who says “Very often I have felt that my relationships have no story, and the reason is because I have jumped ahead of myself, the way I used to turn the pages of a book to find out what happens in the final chapter. I want to know everything straight away. I want to know the content without living through the time span.� (p. 191) Here too is someone living outside the moment rather than in it. Since reading the book is the moment we live for. Thus Elena deprives her relationships of their essence, so busy is she trying to head off any surprises, any pain.
This is a brilliant novel. It’s astonishingly fresh. It reminds me in its compression and economy—not its style, nor its themes—of a few other exquisite books, including Ernest Hemingway’s best novel, , Per Petterson’s stark , and Willa Cather’s terse frontier fable .
Read
February 22, 2020While I'm reading a book, I'm often aware that my perception of time gets a little warped because story time can run much faster than the time it takes to read it. This imbalance can leave me a bit disoriented when I lay the book down and adjust to the fact that it's still the same day as when I began reading though years may have gone by for the characters among whom I've spent the last hour or two.
While reading this book on the other hand, real time passed much faster than story time. And story time moved so very slowly that my reading pace slowed down too; I'd frequently realise that I'd been on the same page for a long time, that I was in a sort of suspended mode, not reading, hardly thinking, quite numbed. The image of a Salvador Dali painting came to mind several times while in that suspended mode, the one where the clocks, all stopped at a particular moment in time, are slowly melting away.
It is not only Dali's warped clocks that reflect my experience with this book, it is also the title of his painting: The Persistence of Memory. The narrative voice is obstinately persistent, and 'remembering' is its obsession. I say 'narrative voice' rather than narrative voices because, although there is a chorus of voices, they all sound the same. They sound the same because they are mediated to the reader for the most part through the voice of the narrator. She reports what they say. When they are allowed to speak directly, it is very refreshing, and if, as on a few occasions, the narrator gives the reader a little view of them as they speak, it's like manna in the desert:
Yet it is not what I feel myself,� Angeliki said, rearranging the lovely grey tissue of her sleeves.
That little detail about the sleeves showed me the character for the first time when her long long story, reported by the narrator, had failed to make her real for me.
The persistently relentless telling that makes up so much of this book mostly concerns one theme: fractured relationships and broken marriages. In all of the stories related to this theme, there is a defining moment, as if each character's personal clock had stopped at just that moment. Years may have passed but they remain obsessed with remembering the incident, and seem to have an endless need to talk about it, a compulsion verging on lunacy. And the irony is that it is the lucidity of the narrator’s probing questions that prompts the outburst of lunacy every time.
Lucidity and lunacy. That pairing of words which sound similar while being very different, echoes the wordplay the author uses to mark the beginning and end of this otherwise serious narrative. In the early pages, a character mistakenly uses the word prolixity for proximity. His slip-up is funny because it is already clear to the reader that he is going to be tediously long-winded. At the end of the book the same character uses the word solicitude when he means solitude. That brings in a little humour again because this character has in fact been maddeningly over solicitous during the course of the book, a behaviour which causes his solitude in the end. Neat.
The conch shell on the cover is neat too. Like a human ear. Relentlessly listening...
While reading this book on the other hand, real time passed much faster than story time. And story time moved so very slowly that my reading pace slowed down too; I'd frequently realise that I'd been on the same page for a long time, that I was in a sort of suspended mode, not reading, hardly thinking, quite numbed. The image of a Salvador Dali painting came to mind several times while in that suspended mode, the one where the clocks, all stopped at a particular moment in time, are slowly melting away.
It is not only Dali's warped clocks that reflect my experience with this book, it is also the title of his painting: The Persistence of Memory. The narrative voice is obstinately persistent, and 'remembering' is its obsession. I say 'narrative voice' rather than narrative voices because, although there is a chorus of voices, they all sound the same. They sound the same because they are mediated to the reader for the most part through the voice of the narrator. She reports what they say. When they are allowed to speak directly, it is very refreshing, and if, as on a few occasions, the narrator gives the reader a little view of them as they speak, it's like manna in the desert:
Yet it is not what I feel myself,� Angeliki said, rearranging the lovely grey tissue of her sleeves.
That little detail about the sleeves showed me the character for the first time when her long long story, reported by the narrator, had failed to make her real for me.
The persistently relentless telling that makes up so much of this book mostly concerns one theme: fractured relationships and broken marriages. In all of the stories related to this theme, there is a defining moment, as if each character's personal clock had stopped at just that moment. Years may have passed but they remain obsessed with remembering the incident, and seem to have an endless need to talk about it, a compulsion verging on lunacy. And the irony is that it is the lucidity of the narrator’s probing questions that prompts the outburst of lunacy every time.
Lucidity and lunacy. That pairing of words which sound similar while being very different, echoes the wordplay the author uses to mark the beginning and end of this otherwise serious narrative. In the early pages, a character mistakenly uses the word prolixity for proximity. His slip-up is funny because it is already clear to the reader that he is going to be tediously long-winded. At the end of the book the same character uses the word solicitude when he means solitude. That brings in a little humour again because this character has in fact been maddeningly over solicitous during the course of the book, a behaviour which causes his solitude in the end. Neat.
The conch shell on the cover is neat too. Like a human ear. Relentlessly listening...
February 28, 2025
“Being is. Nothingness is not.�
With these rather enigmatic words, the Greek Presocratic Parmenides, speaking to us from the Greek Empire’s first Sunrise in early times, defined the Terminology of Isness so succinctly, that nearly 2,500 years later it is still considered a valid mode of reasoning.
The constant actuality of Being is Ms Cusk’s apparent - but elusive, though its appearance may be solid - bedrock.
In modern times Jean-Paul Sartre has summed up this bedrock’s - Being’s - opposite as the Absurd. As do most postwar novelists.
But Cusk has made a clean break with the anxious absurdity of life - and with this unsustainable existentialist edginess - and she accepts the flow of life with classically open and objective eyes, as Parmenides would do.
So the flow is framed by order. Never subjectivity.
One wonders if her single-handed rearing of her kids had anything to do with the solo feats she performs here. The novel is a self-contained miracle.
And could this resultant strong sense of self-reliance, coupled with writing with more and more exactitude in that interim, have backed up her art with such profound self-knowledge as she evinces here?
At the extreme opposite pole from such self-possession, the bizarre characters her narrator encounters as she travels live lives in the forms of bright sunlight dappled by disappointing dark shadow, as most of us do.
I certainly did that, most of my life. That’s considered par for the course in our daily affairs.
But in narrating some pretty wild life stories evenly, and by refraining from any judgement upon them, Cusk’s story teller cuts the circle of our roughly-sewn lives and lays the line out, straight and narrow, on a clean fictional table. Neat as a pin.
This novel, then, lacks any seams - and succeeds in delivering up the impression of a Quite Bearable (thanks but no thanks, Mr. Kundera) Lightness of Being. Life is no longer restrictive and oppressive.
And it is anchored by sustained, very serious and steady Attention to her interlocutors.
It’s like the old slapstick movie hero - you think of your own experience (the main character is always headed for a nosedive) - but, due to her deft handling, it never happens here.
For here is a writer in perfect control of her art.
The result instructs and pleases us, and it’s so dispassionately Aristotelian in its clean unbroken lines, we can’t help but appreciate it.
And the maturing of Cusk’s art so resembles the direction in which my own mind has morphed, it’s a perfect fit for me!
FIVE Strong Stars.
With these rather enigmatic words, the Greek Presocratic Parmenides, speaking to us from the Greek Empire’s first Sunrise in early times, defined the Terminology of Isness so succinctly, that nearly 2,500 years later it is still considered a valid mode of reasoning.
The constant actuality of Being is Ms Cusk’s apparent - but elusive, though its appearance may be solid - bedrock.
In modern times Jean-Paul Sartre has summed up this bedrock’s - Being’s - opposite as the Absurd. As do most postwar novelists.
But Cusk has made a clean break with the anxious absurdity of life - and with this unsustainable existentialist edginess - and she accepts the flow of life with classically open and objective eyes, as Parmenides would do.
So the flow is framed by order. Never subjectivity.
One wonders if her single-handed rearing of her kids had anything to do with the solo feats she performs here. The novel is a self-contained miracle.
And could this resultant strong sense of self-reliance, coupled with writing with more and more exactitude in that interim, have backed up her art with such profound self-knowledge as she evinces here?
At the extreme opposite pole from such self-possession, the bizarre characters her narrator encounters as she travels live lives in the forms of bright sunlight dappled by disappointing dark shadow, as most of us do.
I certainly did that, most of my life. That’s considered par for the course in our daily affairs.
But in narrating some pretty wild life stories evenly, and by refraining from any judgement upon them, Cusk’s story teller cuts the circle of our roughly-sewn lives and lays the line out, straight and narrow, on a clean fictional table. Neat as a pin.
This novel, then, lacks any seams - and succeeds in delivering up the impression of a Quite Bearable (thanks but no thanks, Mr. Kundera) Lightness of Being. Life is no longer restrictive and oppressive.
And it is anchored by sustained, very serious and steady Attention to her interlocutors.
It’s like the old slapstick movie hero - you think of your own experience (the main character is always headed for a nosedive) - but, due to her deft handling, it never happens here.
For here is a writer in perfect control of her art.
The result instructs and pleases us, and it’s so dispassionately Aristotelian in its clean unbroken lines, we can’t help but appreciate it.
And the maturing of Cusk’s art so resembles the direction in which my own mind has morphed, it’s a perfect fit for me!
FIVE Strong Stars.
November 8, 2021
“� 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 of view, it might look quite different. It’s not that we are necessarily being deliberately untruthful. Our own experiences and inner thoughts shape the way we pass information on to the next person. We may also decide to hold back, just a little bit, wary of telling all the details up front. After all, we would like to be seen in a positive light.
“He began to ask me questions, as though he had learned to remind himself to do so, and I wondered what or who had taught him that lesson, which many people never learn.�
I can’t think of very many times when in a few short days I’ve had meaningful conversations with people I know quite well, much less with strangers or mere acquaintances. Yet, the narrator of this novel did just that while on a trip to Athens to teach a writing workshop. I’m a bit envious of her, to be honest. I generally don’t find people to be all that open upon introduction, or even during second or third encounters. People chat, sure, but usually it’s all quite casual. I often wish those I know more personally would open up further as well. Conversations typically skim the surface rather than diving deep. In any case, Cusk’s narrator gets involved in a number of thoughtful and sparkling dialogue with mainly other writers, publishers, students, as well as an airplane companion. I’d like to live in this world- one in which people communicate openly! While the narrator, Faye, learns about these others, we in turn get to know Faye more intimately.
“� among other things a marriage is a system of belief, a story, and though it manifests itself in things that are real enough, the impulse that drives it is ultimately mysterious.�
While this novel has no real plot to speak of, there are some themes that are returned to frequently as the characters engage with one another over food or drink, in cafés, on planes and boats. Marriage, divorce, children, love and relationships, and the writing process are all explored through these exchanges. Some conversationalists are more loquacious than others, reflecting a greater sense of loneliness. As I was drawn into the heart of the novel, the pain became more and more palpable, particularly that of the narrator. In the end, I was left questioning whether opening up to others is in fact healing, or if it leaves us with an even greater ache, sensing the misunderstandings and chasms between others no matter how hard we try. In the end, my feelings were scattered. I felt somewhat like the wilted flower in the vase here on my table, yet delighted and energized by the scintillating prose and the brilliance of that Greek sun! I’d like some more Rachel Cusk in my life, please!
“� I was suddenly filled with the most extraordinary sense of existence as a secret pain, an inner torment it was impossible to share with others, who asked you to attend to them while remaining oblivious to what was inside you…�
“I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest.�
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 of view, it might look quite different. It’s not that we are necessarily being deliberately untruthful. Our own experiences and inner thoughts shape the way we pass information on to the next person. We may also decide to hold back, just a little bit, wary of telling all the details up front. After all, we would like to be seen in a positive light.
“He began to ask me questions, as though he had learned to remind himself to do so, and I wondered what or who had taught him that lesson, which many people never learn.�
I can’t think of very many times when in a few short days I’ve had meaningful conversations with people I know quite well, much less with strangers or mere acquaintances. Yet, the narrator of this novel did just that while on a trip to Athens to teach a writing workshop. I’m a bit envious of her, to be honest. I generally don’t find people to be all that open upon introduction, or even during second or third encounters. People chat, sure, but usually it’s all quite casual. I often wish those I know more personally would open up further as well. Conversations typically skim the surface rather than diving deep. In any case, Cusk’s narrator gets involved in a number of thoughtful and sparkling dialogue with mainly other writers, publishers, students, as well as an airplane companion. I’d like to live in this world- one in which people communicate openly! While the narrator, Faye, learns about these others, we in turn get to know Faye more intimately.
“� among other things a marriage is a system of belief, a story, and though it manifests itself in things that are real enough, the impulse that drives it is ultimately mysterious.�
While this novel has no real plot to speak of, there are some themes that are returned to frequently as the characters engage with one another over food or drink, in cafés, on planes and boats. Marriage, divorce, children, love and relationships, and the writing process are all explored through these exchanges. Some conversationalists are more loquacious than others, reflecting a greater sense of loneliness. As I was drawn into the heart of the novel, the pain became more and more palpable, particularly that of the narrator. In the end, I was left questioning whether opening up to others is in fact healing, or if it leaves us with an even greater ache, sensing the misunderstandings and chasms between others no matter how hard we try. In the end, my feelings were scattered. I felt somewhat like the wilted flower in the vase here on my table, yet delighted and energized by the scintillating prose and the brilliance of that Greek sun! I’d like some more Rachel Cusk in my life, please!
“� I was suddenly filled with the most extraordinary sense of existence as a secret pain, an inner torment it was impossible to share with others, who asked you to attend to them while remaining oblivious to what was inside you…�
“I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest.�
August 21, 2018
The protagonist is a British novelist, who goes to Greece for one week, to teach creative writing. She, *Faye*, is divorced, and has 2 sons who stayed back in London.
That’s about all we know of her for awhile. Actually we never learned her name until late in the book. We are slowly piecing together stories about Faye.
The uniqueness of this novel is cerebral and gorgeous.
Before the narrator even arrives in Athens, she engages in an intriguing-intimate conversation with an older man sitting next to her on the airplane.
She listens closely to his story about his marriages - houses - kids - boats -etc.
She observes deeply.
When Faye begins teaching, we observe how her students stories are becoming source material for her own writing. It’s a fascinating process to interact with a writer’s mind in quiet action.
By the end of this book,
I felt I knew Faye just by the way she absorbed stories from others.
The characters and stories were wonderful.
Nothing was flashy.
Relationships were explored - strengths and weaknesses.
Emotions were explored - conflicts -entanglement -
Love and humanity was explored.
Most..
I couldn’t help but be seduced by the outstanding prose.
I’m definitely reading the next two books in this series.
That’s about all we know of her for awhile. Actually we never learned her name until late in the book. We are slowly piecing together stories about Faye.
The uniqueness of this novel is cerebral and gorgeous.
Before the narrator even arrives in Athens, she engages in an intriguing-intimate conversation with an older man sitting next to her on the airplane.
She listens closely to his story about his marriages - houses - kids - boats -etc.
She observes deeply.
When Faye begins teaching, we observe how her students stories are becoming source material for her own writing. It’s a fascinating process to interact with a writer’s mind in quiet action.
By the end of this book,
I felt I knew Faye just by the way she absorbed stories from others.
The characters and stories were wonderful.
Nothing was flashy.
Relationships were explored - strengths and weaknesses.
Emotions were explored - conflicts -entanglement -
Love and humanity was explored.
Most..
I couldn’t help but be seduced by the outstanding prose.
I’m definitely reading the next two books in this series.
February 3, 2021
No siempre procedo con estos comentarios de la misma forma, a veces no empiezo hasta terminar el libro, pero otros muchos los voy escribiendo a la par que avanzo en la lectura y así van cambiando, a veces mucho, a veces poco. El párrafo siguiente lo escribí, casi tal cual lo van a leer ustedes, más o menos hacia la mitad del libro.
Imagino a Rachel Cusk un día cualquiera ante la página en blanco de la reluciente pantalla de su ordenador. Algo quiere surgir pero nada se concreta. Toma la libreta que siempre lleva consigo y en la que tiene apuntadas cosas que se le han ido ocurriendo, que le han contado o ha oído por casualidad, ideas sugerentes de las que algún día podría echar mano. Va pasando las hojas, lee todas aquellas notas, una detrás de otra, y ninguna la seduce lo suficiente. Páginas y páginas de anotaciones que no acaban de cuajar, que no la empujan a esa primera frase que abrirá la puerta a todas las demás, algo que le viene ocurriendo desde el final de su matrimonio. Aun así, encuentra en algunas de ellas como un cierto aire de familia, quizás pudieran encajar en un libro de relatos, se dice. Y justo ahí surge la idea de “A contraluz�, historias que le van contando gente con la que se cruza, compañeros de trabajo, vecinos de asiento en un avión, viejos amigos y sus invitados, alumnos de un curso de escritura� No son relatos como tal, si acaso, 鷡Úѷ de esos relatos, como contándonos una película, con la particularidad de que son sucesos “reales�, con la ventaja de que pueden ser comentados por sus propios protagonistas, y aunque se miran desde el lado opuesto, desde el que oye, a contraluz, tienen el sello de que todos hablan de ella.
Pues bien, me hizo ilusión que la propia escritora explicara el por qué de esta forma de contar en el último capítulo —también lo del cuaderno de notas está en el libro� mediante el testimonio de una autora que era incapaz de escribir nada después de que un suceso que vivió la llevara a pensar que todo lo que se le ocurría podía ser RESUMIDO en una sola palabra.
“¿Por qué tomarse la molestia de escribir una obra extensa y magnífica sobre los celos cuando la palabra «celos» lo resumía todo?�Algo que, por otra parte, parece sacado de una novela de Vila-Matas y, como seguramente pasaría en la novela del escritor español, la autora proyecta en su propia vida:
“Y no era solo los libros, también empezaba a pasarle con la gente, el otro día, tomando una copa con un amigo, al observarlo desde el otro lado de la mesa pensó «amigo», lo que la llevó a sospechar que su amistad había terminado.�Sin duda una de las grandes partes de un libro en el que solo encontré un cierto bajón en algunos capítulos centrales, nada importante.
En muchos de ellos, la identidad es una de las cuestiones cruciales: cómo encontrarse a sí mismo, saber si hay un sí mismo, saber si se puede elegir quién queremos ser, cuánto de lo que se es se debe a la relación con los otros, cuánto de nosotros se queda atrás cuando los otros nos dejan o nosotros nos apartamos de ellos.
“…dudaba que, en el matrimonio, fuera posible saber qué eres de verdad o incluso separar lo que eres de aquello en lo que te has convertido por la otra persona.�Un problema de la identidad relacionado a menudo con el tipo de relaciones que mantenemos con la pareja, con la familia, con los hijos. Un problema, este de la identidad, que podría ser hasta bienvenido, por lo novelesco, si se quiere ser escritor, un problema del que ni siquiera sabemos su profundidad pues la vida no siempre nos pone en situación de comprobar hasta dónde podríamos llegar. Una identidad que quizás no deberíamos buscar y simplemente deberíamos dejarnos llevar por la pasividad.
“Esos papeles de la vida que nos asfixian —continuó Angeliki� suelen ser proyecciones de los deseos de nuestros padres. La de esposa y la de madre, por ejemplo, es una existencia a la que solemos lanzarnos sin hacernos preguntas, como empujadas por algo ajeno a nosotras�Un libro bastante pesimista en el que las relaciones hombre-mujer son siempre fracasos de los que nunca aprendemos, como niños que repiten el mismo acto una y otra vez en busca del placer inicial y olvidados del sufrimiento que siempre surge al final, cuando desaparece la intensidad con la que se originaron.
“El matrimonio es, entre otras cosas, un sistema de creencias, un relato, y aunque se manifiesta en cosas muy reales, sigue un impulso que, en última instancia, es un misterio.�En la estantería lo he puesto junto a Departamento de especulaciones, yo creo que se llevarán bien.
“…así aprendí, continuó Paniotis, que mejorar las cosas es imposible y que la gente buena tiene tanta culpa como la mala, y que progresar tal vez no sea sino una mera fantasía personal�
March 14, 2015
My wife used to read the TLS 'books of the year' edition and use it to choose books she wanted to get. Then, one fateful year, everyone recommended a certain book; she purchased it in expensive hardcover, read it in a day, and was completely flummoxed. The book was garbage. What to make of this?
She decided that the U.K. publishing scene is so small and (her word) incestuous that they just read the same five books and then talked about them for a week before moving on. She no longer looks to the TLS end of the year special for any tips.*
And Rachel Cusk's abysmal 'Outline' seems to be another case of British froth that has now migrated across the pond for no obvious reason. You might really like to read 'Outline' if, for instance, you really want to read a version of Jacob's Room without all that excessively beautiful prose, and you just can't get enough of the post-Sebaldian "I did this, then I did that, I thought about a kiss, then I sat on a cat" contemporary novel. Yes, this is a book in which a woman goes to Greece and talks about stuff with people. You may be shocked to learn that
a) people get divorced
and
b) people tell stories about themselves.
But I suggest you should be more shocked that a book set in contemporary Greece, of all places, is so hermetically sealed in the world of upper-middle class creative/business types. You should be shocked that the dreary prose of Literary Fiction can receive such rapturous reviews. You should be shocked that deep wisdom about being "caught in a net of words" and "trying to find a different way of living in the world" and the odd spot of anti-literary meta-narrative ("a story might merely be a series of events we believe ourselves to be involved in, but on which we have absolutely no influence at all"; "the story of improvement... has even infected the novel, though perhaps now the novel is infecting us back again, so that we expect of our lives what we've come to expect of our books") can be thrown between two covers and sold to the general public.
And if you're not shocked by that, at least be shocked by the fact that FSG saw fit to publish this in a sans-serif font, as if adverting to the fact that everyone can talk about it, but nobody will read it.
* To be fair, I learned about the project to translate Karl Krauss's 'Last Days of Mankind' from it last year, so it's not all bad.
She decided that the U.K. publishing scene is so small and (her word) incestuous that they just read the same five books and then talked about them for a week before moving on. She no longer looks to the TLS end of the year special for any tips.*
And Rachel Cusk's abysmal 'Outline' seems to be another case of British froth that has now migrated across the pond for no obvious reason. You might really like to read 'Outline' if, for instance, you really want to read a version of Jacob's Room without all that excessively beautiful prose, and you just can't get enough of the post-Sebaldian "I did this, then I did that, I thought about a kiss, then I sat on a cat" contemporary novel. Yes, this is a book in which a woman goes to Greece and talks about stuff with people. You may be shocked to learn that
a) people get divorced
and
b) people tell stories about themselves.
But I suggest you should be more shocked that a book set in contemporary Greece, of all places, is so hermetically sealed in the world of upper-middle class creative/business types. You should be shocked that the dreary prose of Literary Fiction can receive such rapturous reviews. You should be shocked that deep wisdom about being "caught in a net of words" and "trying to find a different way of living in the world" and the odd spot of anti-literary meta-narrative ("a story might merely be a series of events we believe ourselves to be involved in, but on which we have absolutely no influence at all"; "the story of improvement... has even infected the novel, though perhaps now the novel is infecting us back again, so that we expect of our lives what we've come to expect of our books") can be thrown between two covers and sold to the general public.
And if you're not shocked by that, at least be shocked by the fact that FSG saw fit to publish this in a sans-serif font, as if adverting to the fact that everyone can talk about it, but nobody will read it.
* To be fair, I learned about the project to translate Karl Krauss's 'Last Days of Mankind' from it last year, so it's not all bad.
January 29, 2023
Outline by Rachel Cusk is unlike anything I have read before.
Our largely unnamed narrator is a novelist travelling to Athens to deliver a creative writing course. During this journey and her time in Greece she had a number of conversations. It is these dialogues that deliver a powerful study of loss, relationships, friendships, reflections of self, perspectives of others, and many other elements of what it is to be human.
Perhaps one of the most compelling parts for me was when the man she sat next to on the plane took her on a boat trip for a swim in the beautiful Aegean Sea. Once anchored in a cove, they observe another boat with a family, and she thinks about this family (they look happy), and she makes assumptions watching them. The family of course and each of its members would have their own perceptions of their own reality (they might be dreadfully unhappy), also their perceptions of each other and of themselves would differ � in short, there may be no reality at all.
I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about this book. I was dwelling on the question of ‘who the heck we are?�. To be sure � the perspectives of others towards us wouldn’t hold true (largely), even those who live closely to us wouldn’t know exactly who we are. Most fascinating to me is - we probably don’t even know who we are. One reason being we spend so much of our lives, being someone else. Meaning, we spend so much of our time looking after, managing, responding to the needs of others and the world around us. What have we become through other people? Is the idea of ‘self� an illusion?
we are so crammed full of our own memories, obligations, dreams, knowledge and the plethora of day-to-day responsibilities � gleaned over years of listening, talking, emphasising. We can no longer be certain what has happened to us and who we have become
This self-reflection has made me think and I have no bloody idea who I am. Seriously, it’s an uncomfortable feeling. Other questions arise from this like, what do we deserve, what do we really want, and what don’t we want?
No matter how busy you are, no matter how many kids and commitments you have if there’s passion, you find the time. For example, you never hear someone say they wanted to have an affair but couldn’t find the time..
I’m excited to learn this is the first of a trilogy � I need to get my hands on Transit #2. I would like to thank Charles, who’s review threw me on the tracks under the wheels of this wonderful, wonderful 240-page behemoth.
Devoid of plot, philosophical, this one is a powerful, beautiful piece of work.
If he could only love what he did not know, and be loved in return on that same basis, then knowledge became an inexorable disenchantment, for which the only cure was to fall in love with someone new ....This said by a character who had an affair to escape those around him, who knew him so thoroughly.
5 Stars
Our largely unnamed narrator is a novelist travelling to Athens to deliver a creative writing course. During this journey and her time in Greece she had a number of conversations. It is these dialogues that deliver a powerful study of loss, relationships, friendships, reflections of self, perspectives of others, and many other elements of what it is to be human.
Perhaps one of the most compelling parts for me was when the man she sat next to on the plane took her on a boat trip for a swim in the beautiful Aegean Sea. Once anchored in a cove, they observe another boat with a family, and she thinks about this family (they look happy), and she makes assumptions watching them. The family of course and each of its members would have their own perceptions of their own reality (they might be dreadfully unhappy), also their perceptions of each other and of themselves would differ � in short, there may be no reality at all.
I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about this book. I was dwelling on the question of ‘who the heck we are?�. To be sure � the perspectives of others towards us wouldn’t hold true (largely), even those who live closely to us wouldn’t know exactly who we are. Most fascinating to me is - we probably don’t even know who we are. One reason being we spend so much of our lives, being someone else. Meaning, we spend so much of our time looking after, managing, responding to the needs of others and the world around us. What have we become through other people? Is the idea of ‘self� an illusion?
we are so crammed full of our own memories, obligations, dreams, knowledge and the plethora of day-to-day responsibilities � gleaned over years of listening, talking, emphasising. We can no longer be certain what has happened to us and who we have become
This self-reflection has made me think and I have no bloody idea who I am. Seriously, it’s an uncomfortable feeling. Other questions arise from this like, what do we deserve, what do we really want, and what don’t we want?
No matter how busy you are, no matter how many kids and commitments you have if there’s passion, you find the time. For example, you never hear someone say they wanted to have an affair but couldn’t find the time..
I’m excited to learn this is the first of a trilogy � I need to get my hands on Transit #2. I would like to thank Charles, who’s review threw me on the tracks under the wheels of this wonderful, wonderful 240-page behemoth.
Devoid of plot, philosophical, this one is a powerful, beautiful piece of work.
If he could only love what he did not know, and be loved in return on that same basis, then knowledge became an inexorable disenchantment, for which the only cure was to fall in love with someone new ....This said by a character who had an affair to escape those around him, who knew him so thoroughly.
5 Stars
May 30, 2019
Staggeringly unique in its simplicity. Essentially a series of interactions over a week-long trip to Greece where the lead is teaching a writing class: the characters are so rich, yet so contained - and the lead's character was at once the most interesting and the most invisible. I dug through the the text for information about her, frustrated and thrilled that her interlocutors (even a random stranger from an airplane) knew more about her life's story than we did.
But by the end, I somehow felt that I knew her - I could predict how she would respond. "Realness" is an overused idea, but the character began to feel truly human. I especially loved the writing classroom scenes, which were so stripped out of things that I associate with great literature, and yet were so much more than a stage play. A series of interwoven microfictions, perhaps.
Cusk's powers of observation are remarkable. That goes without saying. She’s really excellent with characters lying, or behaving oddly. And something about the lead that is smart: she seems to inspire confession, and that makes the scenes immediately “believable." I also wonder how much KNOWING this is the first part of a trilogy makes a difference. I felt no urgency to learn what I don’t know, just pleasure. Little beats will stick with me: a boat accelerating too quickly; a friend handing a photo over.
My one complaint, for better and worse, is that I never felt compelled to keep reading. It's a brilliant, heady book, but intentionally has no grip. This made me fascinated by it, but it also slowed me down.
But by the end, I somehow felt that I knew her - I could predict how she would respond. "Realness" is an overused idea, but the character began to feel truly human. I especially loved the writing classroom scenes, which were so stripped out of things that I associate with great literature, and yet were so much more than a stage play. A series of interwoven microfictions, perhaps.
Cusk's powers of observation are remarkable. That goes without saying. She’s really excellent with characters lying, or behaving oddly. And something about the lead that is smart: she seems to inspire confession, and that makes the scenes immediately “believable." I also wonder how much KNOWING this is the first part of a trilogy makes a difference. I felt no urgency to learn what I don’t know, just pleasure. Little beats will stick with me: a boat accelerating too quickly; a friend handing a photo over.
My one complaint, for better and worse, is that I never felt compelled to keep reading. It's a brilliant, heady book, but intentionally has no grip. This made me fascinated by it, but it also slowed me down.
October 6, 2019
5 “pristine, refreshing, clear� stars !!
2016 Bronze Award - Third Favorite Read (Tie)
I am a man that resides in the world of emotion. They are here with me always and are always acute, not in the background. Emotions often make me soar to the heavens or shiver in delight, but other times they make me flounder, weigh me down like the experience of walking in the cold snow with a hole in my boot that leaves my precious foot frigid and lonely.
I am unsure why the last paragraph came to my consciousness as I write a review of this sparkling , intelligent and mesmerizing book. This is an unusual novel that very successfully describes the process of thinking that in many ways is antithetical to my own psychological processes.
This is a book about thought in its clearest and purest form. Emotion is not experienced, really, but rather described in a way that quenched my thirst and helped me navigate my inner wilderness.
I had to read this book in such small sections as I wanted to savor each and every sentence that was so carefully crafted and became a miniature portrait of beauty in its simplest forms. Ms. Cusk is a photographer of thought and insight and she captures stills that really are too quick for the human eye or the rather the mind’s eye to see. For the person that is thought based this would lead to interest and enlightenment but for somebody that is emotion based it leads (for me) to the heights of passion, a sense of wonder and at other times brief despair. Ms. Cusk’s prose, however, rescues me and makes me shake in wonder with respect that her creative mind can distill with such clarity and wisdom many truths about relationships, personal histories and the everyday minutiae of life. Minutiae and details that really should not be overlooked but relished, for there are so many , and in each one there is a profoundness that can lead a thoughtful person to create a work of philosophy and an emotional one to either spiritual fervor or the elicitation of rarer emotions such as ecstasy and wonder.
As I write this, I almost feel that I am channeling part of Ms. Cusk in an alternate form as the words are whirring out faster and faster onto this page. Her work makes me feel lighter, more beautiful and that my own personal story is important not just to myself but also perhaps to you, the reader. I cannot expect to be understood but through small conversations I can connect to you and clarify and see the world in its lightness, its darkness and its momentary illusions.
I know by reading this review that you do not know what this book is about but I hope that these sentences convey my immense respect, my desire for more insights and my thankfulness that this novel has been created. This is not only on my more familiar emotional level but also through my written thoughts and reflections.
This book is not about conversations as many reviewers have stated but a series of soliloquies that interact, merge, expand and sometimes die.
Thank you Ms. Cusk. I want so much more of your prose that I am aching with longing. I am thirsty for thought already and again.
2016 Bronze Award - Third Favorite Read (Tie)
I am a man that resides in the world of emotion. They are here with me always and are always acute, not in the background. Emotions often make me soar to the heavens or shiver in delight, but other times they make me flounder, weigh me down like the experience of walking in the cold snow with a hole in my boot that leaves my precious foot frigid and lonely.
I am unsure why the last paragraph came to my consciousness as I write a review of this sparkling , intelligent and mesmerizing book. This is an unusual novel that very successfully describes the process of thinking that in many ways is antithetical to my own psychological processes.
This is a book about thought in its clearest and purest form. Emotion is not experienced, really, but rather described in a way that quenched my thirst and helped me navigate my inner wilderness.
I had to read this book in such small sections as I wanted to savor each and every sentence that was so carefully crafted and became a miniature portrait of beauty in its simplest forms. Ms. Cusk is a photographer of thought and insight and she captures stills that really are too quick for the human eye or the rather the mind’s eye to see. For the person that is thought based this would lead to interest and enlightenment but for somebody that is emotion based it leads (for me) to the heights of passion, a sense of wonder and at other times brief despair. Ms. Cusk’s prose, however, rescues me and makes me shake in wonder with respect that her creative mind can distill with such clarity and wisdom many truths about relationships, personal histories and the everyday minutiae of life. Minutiae and details that really should not be overlooked but relished, for there are so many , and in each one there is a profoundness that can lead a thoughtful person to create a work of philosophy and an emotional one to either spiritual fervor or the elicitation of rarer emotions such as ecstasy and wonder.
As I write this, I almost feel that I am channeling part of Ms. Cusk in an alternate form as the words are whirring out faster and faster onto this page. Her work makes me feel lighter, more beautiful and that my own personal story is important not just to myself but also perhaps to you, the reader. I cannot expect to be understood but through small conversations I can connect to you and clarify and see the world in its lightness, its darkness and its momentary illusions.
I know by reading this review that you do not know what this book is about but I hope that these sentences convey my immense respect, my desire for more insights and my thankfulness that this novel has been created. This is not only on my more familiar emotional level but also through my written thoughts and reflections.
This book is not about conversations as many reviewers have stated but a series of soliloquies that interact, merge, expand and sometimes die.
Thank you Ms. Cusk. I want so much more of your prose that I am aching with longing. I am thirsty for thought already and again.
February 4, 2019
Although I've read this in English I thought that the title for the Spanish translation suited the novel better then the original. Contraluz, that translates literally as 'backlighting' but whose meaning is something like 'against the light' fitted better this novel in which an English woman, who travels to Athens to teach writing to Greek pupils, leaves behind a shaded world to face her life and herself against the Aegean sun.
This novel is loaded with material. Gender is prominent: women, women and children, women and men, women and marriage, women and a profession. And with gender comes identity. And with identity, representation. And with representation, writing.
For even if the novel a couple of times questions the need for structures, what strings everything together, is the phenomenon of story telling. The narrator's role is that of an amanuensis who registers all the conversations she has during her writing trip: the man on the plane, the man on the boat, the British friend, the friend of the friend, the friend of the friend of the friend. And when the oral stories are not offered during her fortuitous encounters, then in her writing classes, her teaching consists of bringing more stories out of her Greek pupils.
As I am currently reading Ovid's Metamorphoses, where an extensive panorama of stories are held together by complex entwined narrative threads, encountering Cusk's yarn felt I was in a familiar weaving workshop.
Apart from looking at her stories, an activity that I found somewhat addictive, since Cusk is very successful at exploiting the narrative pull, I was also trying to discern, against the narrative screen, the identity of the narrator. But I could only loose threads that would not weave into a complete image. Certainly a contraluz.
Some aspects, however, did not convince me. The way she deals with people whose main language is not English is unconvincing. It made me smile when she presents a Greek person who speaks English very fluidly mistaking twice a couple of words with a weighty Latin DNA. . In particular the writing lessons seemed unconvincing, since the issue of the choice of language was not addressed. All the storytellers have the same voice and they engaged into meticulous descriptions that do not correspond to an oral mode. And last, her wealthy characters seemed caricatures. I therefore felt at times that my belief was held in suspension.
Nonetheless, I will soon continue with the rest of the trilogy. And may I will be able to see better against a backlight.
January 3, 2016
To call this a novel would seem to restrict it to a convention of style, to set up expectations of narrative rhythm and form. Outline, so aptly named, is a sketchbook of lives, charcoal drawings of souls captured in profile.
The book is series of conversations delivered with a twanging chord of tension and self-interest. Or really, it's a collection of confessions delivered to a listener who reciprocates only rarely; she is an ear, an eye, a filter; less participant than sponge.
The subject of the conversations is the failure of the domestic relationship, mostly marital, occasionally filial. It is a brittle and lonely satire on self-scrutiny. The narrator, a writer spending several days in Greece leading a writing workshop, moves about her emotional space like a somnambulist: present, but largely unaccounted for. Through encounters both small and profound, her streaming regrets and grief and guilt are subsumed by the people she meets—some strangers, some familiar—and she allows their troubles and complaints to drown out her own.
Outline is an unsettling read, for there is a sense of a narrator disembodied from the story, coming to life only when she is directly addressed. We don't even learn her name until near the end (Faye, for what it's worth), as if her identity simply isn't the point. It's her silence that matters, the way others open up to her, the way strangers attach themselves to her malleability.
The queasy strangeness is brilliantly etched; this is a work meant to be admired, not liked. I never really warmed up to the style or Faye, and I breathed a sigh of relief when this brief experiment came to an end, but I know I've read something entirely new (to me), a way to move the narrator from the frame and plant her behind the camera.
The book is series of conversations delivered with a twanging chord of tension and self-interest. Or really, it's a collection of confessions delivered to a listener who reciprocates only rarely; she is an ear, an eye, a filter; less participant than sponge.
The subject of the conversations is the failure of the domestic relationship, mostly marital, occasionally filial. It is a brittle and lonely satire on self-scrutiny. The narrator, a writer spending several days in Greece leading a writing workshop, moves about her emotional space like a somnambulist: present, but largely unaccounted for. Through encounters both small and profound, her streaming regrets and grief and guilt are subsumed by the people she meets—some strangers, some familiar—and she allows their troubles and complaints to drown out her own.
Outline is an unsettling read, for there is a sense of a narrator disembodied from the story, coming to life only when she is directly addressed. We don't even learn her name until near the end (Faye, for what it's worth), as if her identity simply isn't the point. It's her silence that matters, the way others open up to her, the way strangers attach themselves to her malleability.
The queasy strangeness is brilliantly etched; this is a work meant to be admired, not liked. I never really warmed up to the style or Faye, and I breathed a sigh of relief when this brief experiment came to an end, but I know I've read something entirely new (to me), a way to move the narrator from the frame and plant her behind the camera.
August 4, 2021
unfortunately, this didn’t work for me. this book is, simply put, recounts of multiple conversations that the protagonist has with people she meets while in athens, all of whom basically tell her their whole life story. i tried not to take the book too literally because i get that’s not the point of it, but i was really taken out of the story numerous times because i kept thinking ‘who the hell would tell a stranger their whole life story in this much detail?�. it didn’t help that i found all the characters/their stories boring, especially as the tone of a lot of them blended together, so the book was pretty much the epitome of ‘no one asked�. the ‘narrative� of the book was pretty confusing too what with all the details about different characters, so i think it would’ve worked better as a short story collection rather than a novel.
i questioned a few times whether this book was satire because literally no one talks like this, and if they do, i hope i never meet them. i do have to admit the book is very well written (albeit a little overwritten at times), the author offers some great observations, and she is clearly very intelligent and articulate. but despite these positives, and despite the fact that i do understand what the book is overall trying to do (e.g. the discussions around identity construction, that we’re all obsessed with our own narratives, how we’ll never know people just from what they tell us or how they present themselves, how you can have an outline of yourself based on other people’s perspectives/perceptions of you), i still found the book very boring and tedious to get through.
there’s definitely an air of ‘if you didn’t like it, you just didn’t get it� around this book, but as i said above i do understand/appreciate its intellectual substance and what it was trying to do, but that didn’t make it any more entertaining.
i questioned a few times whether this book was satire because literally no one talks like this, and if they do, i hope i never meet them. i do have to admit the book is very well written (albeit a little overwritten at times), the author offers some great observations, and she is clearly very intelligent and articulate. but despite these positives, and despite the fact that i do understand what the book is overall trying to do (e.g. the discussions around identity construction, that we’re all obsessed with our own narratives, how we’ll never know people just from what they tell us or how they present themselves, how you can have an outline of yourself based on other people’s perspectives/perceptions of you), i still found the book very boring and tedious to get through.
there’s definitely an air of ‘if you didn’t like it, you just didn’t get it� around this book, but as i said above i do understand/appreciate its intellectual substance and what it was trying to do, but that didn’t make it any more entertaining.
June 20, 2024
Brilliant.
Exquisite, fresh, intelligent and melancholically wrapped up with subtle humour, this little beast of a novel left me totally satisfied and begging for more at the same time.
On the surface ‘Outline� has practically no plot or any character development and seems more like a lot of random conversations than anything else but my tiny little brain was over the moon while reading this. Totally electrified. So much simplicity. So much love for literature and human nature. Such beautiful imagery. Outstanding.
I’m definitely looking forward to ‘Transit�, the next one in what I think will become one my favourite trilogies ever.
Bravo, Ms. Kusk!
“I wondered sometimes whether I had an actual horror of peace, whether I sought to stir things up out of a fear of boredom that was also, you might say, a fear of death itself.�
Exquisite, fresh, intelligent and melancholically wrapped up with subtle humour, this little beast of a novel left me totally satisfied and begging for more at the same time.
On the surface ‘Outline� has practically no plot or any character development and seems more like a lot of random conversations than anything else but my tiny little brain was over the moon while reading this. Totally electrified. So much simplicity. So much love for literature and human nature. Such beautiful imagery. Outstanding.
I’m definitely looking forward to ‘Transit�, the next one in what I think will become one my favourite trilogies ever.
Bravo, Ms. Kusk!
“I wondered sometimes whether I had an actual horror of peace, whether I sought to stir things up out of a fear of boredom that was also, you might say, a fear of death itself.�
January 27, 2021
This is one of those rare reads for me in which a close-to-DNF turned into a stellar read for me. 😮
Here are my early comments as I was reading…these are not promising!
� Chapter 2: With Ryan, a fellow teacher who was born in Ireland and lived in the US I think. BORING!
� Chapter 3: Describes the apartment she is staying in. So so boring! WTF
� Chapter 4: Back with the guy on the airplane. BORING.
� Chapter 5: with a famous novelist, Angelika, and a man who was a small-press publisher, Paniotis. So so boring. 41 pages, near end it was OK but still boring.
So, from reading the inside of the front of the dustjacket I knew there were 5 more chapters to go.
In Chapter 6 she lets us in on one of the classes she taught in a writing workshop. There were 10 students. Their assignment she had given them for one of the classes was to write about “something they had noticed on their way to the workshop�. Most of them had stories to relate regarding their assignment and they were just fascinating. Or rather, Rachel Cusk serving as the mouthpiece for what they related in the class (orally) was just fascinating. I have never read Scheherazade’s One Thousand and One Nights, but I could just listen to these students� stories forever.
And for a special treat her students return in Chapter 9 and this time their assignment was to write about an animal. Once again, they did not disappoint.
In the other chapters she tells us about conversations she has with different people, one of them being a guy who she sat next to on the airplane coming into Athens (she subsequently spends some time with him on his boat once in Athens), which brings me to my last point. I would like to meet Rachel Cusk and to shake her hand and tell her how much I liked this book. But I was thinking that I probably would not do that, because of the descriptions she gave of people she met—what they looked like as she perceived them. Sometimes she painted an OK picture of them, but my God other times she was brutal. So I would be afraid of meeting her because I would be worried about what was running through her head as she perceived me in front of her—Rachel Cusk: “here is this man before me with quivering lips like Jello who is plug ugly and reeks of yesterday’s garbage that was left out to ferment in the broiling sun next to dog poop.� Something like that. You think I exaggerate? Here is her description of the man who she was on the boat with as he came toward her to kiss her:
� �..he came towards me, out of the shade and into the sun, heavily yet inexorably, like a prehistoric creature issuing from its cave. He bent down, moving awkwardly around the coldbox at my feet, and tried to embrace me from the side, putting one arm around my shoulders while attempting to bring his face into contact with mine. I could smell his breath, and feel his bushy grey eyebrows grazing my skin. The great beak of his nose loomed at the edge of my field of vision, his claw-like hands with their white fur tumbled at my shoulders. I felt myself, momentarily, being wrapped around in his greyness and dryness, as though the prehistoric creature were wrapping me in its dry bat-like wings. I felt his scaly mouth miss its mark and move blindly at my cheek.�
😮 You see what I mean? Maybe she would be more forgiving of me if all I wanted was her signature on one of her books at a book-signing event. I will consider it. Before I do that, I will proceed to read the next book in her trilogy (the two others from the trilogy being Transit [2017] and Kudos [2018]).
Notes:
� Interesting interview she gave at the time this novel was published:
� I liked this description of the book from a reviewer from the Guardian (see below for review link): “And, really, that's about it. There's no conventional narrative arc � indeed, there are so many stories-within-stories that you frequently forget who is speaking. There's no one you can root for or even believe in very strongly, and the novel offers few of the standard expected rewards of fiction�. It doesn't matter � every single word is earned, precisely tuned, enthralling. Outline is a triumph of attitude and daring, a masterclass in tone.�
Reviews:
�
�
�
Here are my early comments as I was reading…these are not promising!
� Chapter 2: With Ryan, a fellow teacher who was born in Ireland and lived in the US I think. BORING!
� Chapter 3: Describes the apartment she is staying in. So so boring! WTF
� Chapter 4: Back with the guy on the airplane. BORING.
� Chapter 5: with a famous novelist, Angelika, and a man who was a small-press publisher, Paniotis. So so boring. 41 pages, near end it was OK but still boring.
So, from reading the inside of the front of the dustjacket I knew there were 5 more chapters to go.
In Chapter 6 she lets us in on one of the classes she taught in a writing workshop. There were 10 students. Their assignment she had given them for one of the classes was to write about “something they had noticed on their way to the workshop�. Most of them had stories to relate regarding their assignment and they were just fascinating. Or rather, Rachel Cusk serving as the mouthpiece for what they related in the class (orally) was just fascinating. I have never read Scheherazade’s One Thousand and One Nights, but I could just listen to these students� stories forever.
And for a special treat her students return in Chapter 9 and this time their assignment was to write about an animal. Once again, they did not disappoint.
In the other chapters she tells us about conversations she has with different people, one of them being a guy who she sat next to on the airplane coming into Athens (she subsequently spends some time with him on his boat once in Athens), which brings me to my last point. I would like to meet Rachel Cusk and to shake her hand and tell her how much I liked this book. But I was thinking that I probably would not do that, because of the descriptions she gave of people she met—what they looked like as she perceived them. Sometimes she painted an OK picture of them, but my God other times she was brutal. So I would be afraid of meeting her because I would be worried about what was running through her head as she perceived me in front of her—Rachel Cusk: “here is this man before me with quivering lips like Jello who is plug ugly and reeks of yesterday’s garbage that was left out to ferment in the broiling sun next to dog poop.� Something like that. You think I exaggerate? Here is her description of the man who she was on the boat with as he came toward her to kiss her:
� �..he came towards me, out of the shade and into the sun, heavily yet inexorably, like a prehistoric creature issuing from its cave. He bent down, moving awkwardly around the coldbox at my feet, and tried to embrace me from the side, putting one arm around my shoulders while attempting to bring his face into contact with mine. I could smell his breath, and feel his bushy grey eyebrows grazing my skin. The great beak of his nose loomed at the edge of my field of vision, his claw-like hands with their white fur tumbled at my shoulders. I felt myself, momentarily, being wrapped around in his greyness and dryness, as though the prehistoric creature were wrapping me in its dry bat-like wings. I felt his scaly mouth miss its mark and move blindly at my cheek.�
😮 You see what I mean? Maybe she would be more forgiving of me if all I wanted was her signature on one of her books at a book-signing event. I will consider it. Before I do that, I will proceed to read the next book in her trilogy (the two others from the trilogy being Transit [2017] and Kudos [2018]).
Notes:
� Interesting interview she gave at the time this novel was published:
� I liked this description of the book from a reviewer from the Guardian (see below for review link): “And, really, that's about it. There's no conventional narrative arc � indeed, there are so many stories-within-stories that you frequently forget who is speaking. There's no one you can root for or even believe in very strongly, and the novel offers few of the standard expected rewards of fiction�. It doesn't matter � every single word is earned, precisely tuned, enthralling. Outline is a triumph of attitude and daring, a masterclass in tone.�
Reviews:
�
�
�
January 30, 2015
Rachel Cusk is obviously a writer of tremendous talent, and "Outline" doesn't hide her skills.
But I found this book to be lacking. The premise, on its face, is interesting: a series of conversations the narrator has with people she meets on her week in Athens that helps show the wide disparity of "outlines" and shapes of people's lives. It sounds existential and philosophical and hip and like half of all of the other novels that are coming out right now.
For the most part, the book executes its intended premise well. We meet all sorts of characters � including her "neighbor" from an airplane ride who occupies multiple chapters in the book � to see how their past life experiences provide shape and form to who they are today.
But after a while, how much can the reader take of just hearing about different sorts of people with no action actually happening? I mean I guess yes, the narrator is going through a week of Athens, and the narrator is doing things: she is on a boat with a man she barely knows, she's teaching a writing class, she's hanging out with writers.
But is that it? I'm not saying the narrator had to be jumping out of moving cars and scaling tall buildings, but at the same time, I need something to happen. After a while, I was tired hearing another character psychoanalyze himself or herself. It just became too much. And what about the narrator? I left feeling like I knew something about 25 or 30 strangers, but I knew nothing about the narrator herself, or how these interactions with other people affected her. Maybe that was the intended point: that for us, the readers, we were left with only an outline of the narrator. But that didn't do it for me. I expected more in the way of plot development by a writer who has an abundance of talent.
For the first 60 pages, this book was really fantastic. But by the end, I was happy it was over. I can't say I was disappointed with the ending, because I didn't know what the ending should be. There was no action that would lead one to have an expectation for what the ending should be.
So I don't know. My opinion is just one of what I'm sure are many out there on this book. But considering I broke my own rule allowed this book to jump to the top of the pile, I'm rather sorry that I allowed more deserving books to be placed behind it.
But I found this book to be lacking. The premise, on its face, is interesting: a series of conversations the narrator has with people she meets on her week in Athens that helps show the wide disparity of "outlines" and shapes of people's lives. It sounds existential and philosophical and hip and like half of all of the other novels that are coming out right now.
For the most part, the book executes its intended premise well. We meet all sorts of characters � including her "neighbor" from an airplane ride who occupies multiple chapters in the book � to see how their past life experiences provide shape and form to who they are today.
But after a while, how much can the reader take of just hearing about different sorts of people with no action actually happening? I mean I guess yes, the narrator is going through a week of Athens, and the narrator is doing things: she is on a boat with a man she barely knows, she's teaching a writing class, she's hanging out with writers.
But is that it? I'm not saying the narrator had to be jumping out of moving cars and scaling tall buildings, but at the same time, I need something to happen. After a while, I was tired hearing another character psychoanalyze himself or herself. It just became too much. And what about the narrator? I left feeling like I knew something about 25 or 30 strangers, but I knew nothing about the narrator herself, or how these interactions with other people affected her. Maybe that was the intended point: that for us, the readers, we were left with only an outline of the narrator. But that didn't do it for me. I expected more in the way of plot development by a writer who has an abundance of talent.
For the first 60 pages, this book was really fantastic. But by the end, I was happy it was over. I can't say I was disappointed with the ending, because I didn't know what the ending should be. There was no action that would lead one to have an expectation for what the ending should be.
So I don't know. My opinion is just one of what I'm sure are many out there on this book. But considering I broke my own rule allowed this book to jump to the top of the pile, I'm rather sorry that I allowed more deserving books to be placed behind it.
January 10, 2023
Can’t think of a better novel with which to begin my year. I devoured Outline and started my mornings with this all week. Between this book and an author profile on The Atlantic, Rachel Cusk earned herself a new fan; the online piece was by Thomas Chatterton Williams and I stumbled on it entirely by chance just a few days ago, right after putting down the novel, still sipping my coffee.
I’m a bit late to the Cusk party, not that it matters. Funny that the Atlantic feature would mention that we all begin with Outline.
Just like in real life, have you ever been disappointed when someone in a novel finally opened their mouth and, what do you know, they went and ruined it for you? If you thought they were sexy before, maybe they weren’t anymore, and if you presumed they were smart or otherwise interesting, somehow that went down the drain, as well. The settings are fine, you’ve been admiring the furniture, the weather, the light. Then walks in a talking head on a stick, like the crude puppet that it is, and bang!, the story is shot.
In books, but also real life on occasion, I find myself crestfallen when dialogues � or even just a few lines of soliloquy � sound disconcertingly fake, sometimes despite everything else going so well. The topic could be anything: this isn’t about being realistic, per se. This is about rendering human thought and speech patterns credibly. It’s about being in the world and having met actual people.
In Outline, a novel that felt to me as reflexive as it felt alive, the chapters roll in and out as if on a revolving stage in a play. Characters vary wildly from one scene to the next and Cusk introduces a variety of perspectives and personalities. Around a mostly self-effaced protagonist � a summer teacher visiting Athens � work relations and other social contacts express themselves casually, but with fantastic insight and eloquence. It is their stories, often their life stories, that make up the book and come to define this novel, not the protagonist’s.
If you ever took a painting class, maybe a teacher once told you to focus on negative space. This is the novel for it and I’m in love with the results. But most of all, I’m impressed with how attentive Rachel Cusk seems to real life interactions, their creativity and beauty, their depth, and how skilled she is at getting to the heart of her characters as she crafts their conversations.
Again, can’t think of a better novel with which to begin my year. If this is an omen, I’ll take it.
I’m a bit late to the Cusk party, not that it matters. Funny that the Atlantic feature would mention that we all begin with Outline.
Just like in real life, have you ever been disappointed when someone in a novel finally opened their mouth and, what do you know, they went and ruined it for you? If you thought they were sexy before, maybe they weren’t anymore, and if you presumed they were smart or otherwise interesting, somehow that went down the drain, as well. The settings are fine, you’ve been admiring the furniture, the weather, the light. Then walks in a talking head on a stick, like the crude puppet that it is, and bang!, the story is shot.
In books, but also real life on occasion, I find myself crestfallen when dialogues � or even just a few lines of soliloquy � sound disconcertingly fake, sometimes despite everything else going so well. The topic could be anything: this isn’t about being realistic, per se. This is about rendering human thought and speech patterns credibly. It’s about being in the world and having met actual people.
In Outline, a novel that felt to me as reflexive as it felt alive, the chapters roll in and out as if on a revolving stage in a play. Characters vary wildly from one scene to the next and Cusk introduces a variety of perspectives and personalities. Around a mostly self-effaced protagonist � a summer teacher visiting Athens � work relations and other social contacts express themselves casually, but with fantastic insight and eloquence. It is their stories, often their life stories, that make up the book and come to define this novel, not the protagonist’s.
If you ever took a painting class, maybe a teacher once told you to focus on negative space. This is the novel for it and I’m in love with the results. But most of all, I’m impressed with how attentive Rachel Cusk seems to real life interactions, their creativity and beauty, their depth, and how skilled she is at getting to the heart of her characters as she crafts their conversations.
Again, can’t think of a better novel with which to begin my year. If this is an omen, I’ll take it.
October 18, 2024
Exceptional reading.
I felt that each of the female characters - represented a different facet to the pain of the disintegration of Faye's, our narrator's marriage. As if each woman, was in fact recounting all the variations of loss experienced by Faye. Each woman relaying not simply the loss of their partner but the avalanche, or domino effect of the result of the breaking down of the most significant relationship in their lives; and most disturbing of all - their sense of identity and in tandem with this, a loss of what is real, both past and present. A process with which I can infinitely identify.
Some strange Greek translations
Panayiotis - usual, not Paniotis
Yiasas - not Yassas
And I had to laugh about her boat excursions with "her neighbour", how could she not know that he would expect "something" in return.
All the women capture in their painful accounting of lost love - those very confounding other losses - of belief, in purpose, of their children -
And in most cases the male rejection of the female. I particularly liked her idea that men want women to fulfill their fantasy - they must perform the part allocated, expected of them.
The best, most truthful, most insightful "novel" I have read in a very long time.
I felt that each of the female characters - represented a different facet to the pain of the disintegration of Faye's, our narrator's marriage. As if each woman, was in fact recounting all the variations of loss experienced by Faye. Each woman relaying not simply the loss of their partner but the avalanche, or domino effect of the result of the breaking down of the most significant relationship in their lives; and most disturbing of all - their sense of identity and in tandem with this, a loss of what is real, both past and present. A process with which I can infinitely identify.
Some strange Greek translations
Panayiotis - usual, not Paniotis
Yiasas - not Yassas
And I had to laugh about her boat excursions with "her neighbour", how could she not know that he would expect "something" in return.
All the women capture in their painful accounting of lost love - those very confounding other losses - of belief, in purpose, of their children -
And in most cases the male rejection of the female. I particularly liked her idea that men want women to fulfill their fantasy - they must perform the part allocated, expected of them.
The best, most truthful, most insightful "novel" I have read in a very long time.
December 8, 2023
No matter what I would say about this book, the truth is that it can't be summarized.
The plot serves as an excuse for writing scenes so vivid that it's impossible not to feel as though you've lived them. I saw those images, had those conversations through Rachel Cusk's words, and I'm not going to make the mistake of trying to explain them.
" the translator says that a sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal. Those lines concerned the art of writing, but looking around himself in early middle age my neighbour began to see that they applied just as much to the art of living. Everywhere he looked he saw people as it were ruined by the extremity of their own experiences".
The plot serves as an excuse for writing scenes so vivid that it's impossible not to feel as though you've lived them. I saw those images, had those conversations through Rachel Cusk's words, and I'm not going to make the mistake of trying to explain them.
" the translator says that a sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal. Those lines concerned the art of writing, but looking around himself in early middle age my neighbour began to see that they applied just as much to the art of living. Everywhere he looked he saw people as it were ruined by the extremity of their own experiences".
May 5, 2019
«Το γεγονός ότι ο κόσμος νιώθει υποχρεωμένος να χρησιμοποιεί τα αγγλικά με κάνει να νιώθω έως και ενοχή, τι κομμάτι του εαυτού του πρέπει να αφήσει κανείς πίσω του σ� αυτή τη μετάβαση από τη μια γλώσσα στην άλλη, σαν τους ανθρώπους που τους διατάζουν να εγκαταλείψουν τα σπίτια τους και να πάρουν μαζί τους μόνο τα απολύτως απαραίτητα».
Πολύ ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο, σύγχρονη λογοτεχνία, χωρίς πλοκή, αλλά θέτει επίκαιρους προβληματισμούς.
Πολύ ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο, σύγχρονη λογοτεχνία, χωρίς πλοκή, αλλά θέτει επίκαιρους προβληματισμούς.
![Profile Image for ©hrissie ❁ [1st week on campus-somewhat run-down].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1610034740i%2F49071166._UX200_CR0%2C20%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
July 21, 2022
Sombre, certainly...Though counterbalanced, perhaps, by the many human stories that traverse this book, reminiscent of The Humans of New York style of personal narration. The beauty of Cusk's simple, impactful writing is in the episodic, momentous, and aphoristic-like approach to the circumscribing world. Very refreshing and pleasurable company.
Worth proceeding with the rest of the series.
Full review to follow.
Worth proceeding with the rest of the series.
Full review to follow.
August 30, 2019
Όταν ξεκίνησα το "περίγραμμα"(χθες δηλαδή), θεωρούσα ότι αυτό θα είναι το τελευταίο βιβλίο που θα διαβάσω εδώ στας εξοχας που θα μείνω ως την Κυριακή.. Όμως δεν περίμενα ότι ξεκινώντας το θα με συναρπάσει τόσο που θα το τελειώσω σε κάτι λιγότερο από 2 μέρες.. Αν με ρωτήσει κάποιος τι με συνεπήρε τόσο, τι θα απαντούσα? Σίγουρα δεν ήταν η απλούστατη έως και ανύπαρκτη πλοκή. Μια συγγραφέας που έχει μόλις χωρίσει και έρχεται στην Αθήνα για να δώσει ένα σεμινάριο δημιουργικής γραφής.. Δεν είναι ακριβώς το στόρι που φωνάζει συναρπαστικό. Όμως ακριβώς εκεί βρίσκεται η "μαγκια" ενός συγγραφέα πιστεύω, να παίρνει κάτι απλό και να το ανάγει σε κάτι πολύ μεγάλο. Αυτό ακριβως κάνει η συγγραφέας εδώ. Η γραφή της είναι απλά μαγευτική, τα 10 κεφάλαια από τα οποία αποτελείται το βιβλίο αποτελούν συναντήσεις-συζητήσεις με φίλους, μαθητές, τον συνταξιδιώτη της από το αεροπλάνο κλπ και κάθε μία αποτελεί ένα κομμάτι του περίγραμματος της αφηγήτριας, χωρίς να επιτρέπει να διεισδυσουμε στα βαθύτερα του χαρακτήρα της. Όμως κάθε κεφάλαιο και κάθε συζήτηση δίνει και κάτι μικρό από αυτή.φτανοντας στο τέλος,ο αναγνωστης ανακαλυπτει ότι τελικά ίσως το πως ερμηνεύουμε και μεταφέρουμε τα όσα ακούμε και βλέπουμε, λένε πιο πολλά για εμάς πάρα για τον συνομιλητή μας. Ένα βιβλίο πολύ διαφορετικό από ό, τι έχω διαβάσει εδώ και καιρό, μια πολύ φρέσκια ματιά, μπαίνω κατευθείαν στο δεύτερο μέρος! Το καλοκαίρι είναι ακόμη εδω🤣😂
4.5 αστερια
4.5 αστερια
July 6, 2019
4 - 4.5
I've been meaning to read Cusk for a few years, after hearing, seeing and reading raving reviews for her latest three books in a series, of which Outline is the first. The black and white covers using Man Ray's photography got stuck in my head. (not this cover).
This is a plotless novel made up of conversations with a variety of people - a Greek man who had been divorced three times, a publisher, writers, writing course students and a few others. These conversations are recorded in a non-judgemental, passive way by Faye, a writer who's spending a couple of weeks in Athens, teaching a writing course.
Outline is original and captivating while being easy to read. The writing is crafted and precise. The stories, many of them soliloquies, are relatable, ordinary yet unique.
Now that I had a taste of Cusk's writing, I'll be indulging in her other two novels in the series.
I've been meaning to read Cusk for a few years, after hearing, seeing and reading raving reviews for her latest three books in a series, of which Outline is the first. The black and white covers using Man Ray's photography got stuck in my head. (not this cover).
This is a plotless novel made up of conversations with a variety of people - a Greek man who had been divorced three times, a publisher, writers, writing course students and a few others. These conversations are recorded in a non-judgemental, passive way by Faye, a writer who's spending a couple of weeks in Athens, teaching a writing course.
Outline is original and captivating while being easy to read. The writing is crafted and precise. The stories, many of them soliloquies, are relatable, ordinary yet unique.
Now that I had a taste of Cusk's writing, I'll be indulging in her other two novels in the series.
October 1, 2018
Like many others of my ŷ friends, I re-read just ahead of the publication of the concluding book of the trilogy which this book commenced. My original review of this and the second volume is below � on this reading I enjoyed finding quotes which summarised for me either Rachel Cusk’s underlying technique in writing the trilogy, or the choice of title for this first volume.
-----------------------------------------------
Original joint review with
Outstanding and innovative novels, the first two parts of a planned trilogy.
The books are narrated by a writer and now creative writing teacher, a recently divorced mother of two boys � this together with her name (Faye) mentioned only once in each book is almost all we know about her. Instead the book, narrated in the first person, is the record of various conversations with she has in which she plays a typically passive role listening to the other person’s life story and perhaps making a few comments and questions.
In the first book she visits Athens to teach a creative writing course, those she talks to include her neighbour on the plane (ex a successful shipping owner), the attendees at her creative writing course, friends, fellow teachers. The themes explored in the stories include the unreliability of other’s stories, storytelling itself, female identity, progression and improvement (and its inadequacy) but often basically people’s relationships with family.
All of the stories feature protagonists in not dissimilar positions to Faye and we realise that in some ways the stories and her reaction to them tell us about Faye by a process (one that Cusk in interviews refers to as “annihilated perspective� which is made explicit at the end of the book, when another teacher tells Faye about a conversation she had with her neighbour on the plane “the longer she listened to his answers, the more she felt that something fundamental was being delineated, something not about him but about her. He was describing � what she was not �. This ant-description � had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition; while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank �.(which) gave her � a sense of who she now was�. In the book’s last paragraph, the Greek seat-neighbour contacts her and says (as she does not want to meet� that he will spend the day in “solicitude�, which she corrects to mean “solitude� � again a key part of the book’s theme.
The second book contains some slightly weaker elements � a key part of the book is Faye’s decision to buy a very run down flat and to bring it builders to renovate and soundproof it � her elderly and hostile neighbours downstairs are unconvincing and one dimensional (and oddly do not have any story of their own � almost uniquely across the two novels), however the overall effect is still compelling. Faye’s intervention in people’s accounts of their lives (her hairdresser, her builders, one of her students, some recently divorced and remarried friends), deliberately adding her own views and seeking their perspective on it, is much greater in this book � and as a result the accounts have more of a common theme looking at change and reinvention and its interaction with freedom. She also meets a man with whom she starts a tentative relationship � and has a feeling of pulling away from a precipice.
There was so little interface between inside and outside, so little friction
Sometimes .. the loss of transition became the gain of simplicity
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that writing comes out of tension, the tension between what is inside and what’s outside. Surface tension, isn’t that the phrase � actually that’s not a bad title
The perimeter of shade had receded and the glare of the street advanced, so that we now sit almost at the interface of the two
Clelia favoured symphonies: in fact, she possessed the complete symphonic works of all the major composers. There was a marked prejudice against compositions that glorified the solo voice or instrument �. It occurred to me that in Clelia’s mind .. [symphonies] perhaps represented � a sort of objectivity that arose when the focus became the sum of human parts, and the individual was blotted out
In the center of Clelia’s apartment was a large light space, a hall, where the doors to all the other rooms converged. Here standing on a plinth was a glazed, terracotta statue of a woman
It marked some difference between him and me, in that he was observing something while I, evidently, was entirely immersed in being it. It was one of those moments, I said, that in retrospect have come to seem prophetic to me
Her consciousness, at that point - she was forty three years old - was so crammed full not just of her own memories, obligations, dreams and knowledge, and the plethora of her day to day responsibilities, but also of other people's - gleaned over years of listening, talking, emphasising, worrying - that she was frightened most of all of the boundaries depressing these numerous types of mental freight, the distinctions between them, crumbling away until she was no more certain what has happened to her and what to other people she knew
This feeling of being negated as I was being exposed has had a particularly powerful effect on me I said.
He hasn't realised how many English meanings came from Greek compounds. For instance the word ellipsis, he'd been told, could literally be translated as to hide behind silence.
I don't compose myself from other people's ideas, any more than I compose a verse from someone else's poem.
I waited for him too ask me a question, which after all would only have been polite, but he didn't, even though I had asked him many questions about himself. He sealed himself in his own view of life, even at the risk of causing offence, because he knew the view to be under threat.
She had sat there, she said, and thought about her own lifetime habit of explaining herself, and she thought about the power of silence, which put other people or of one another's reach.
-----------------------------------------------
Original joint review with
Outstanding and innovative novels, the first two parts of a planned trilogy.
The books are narrated by a writer and now creative writing teacher, a recently divorced mother of two boys � this together with her name (Faye) mentioned only once in each book is almost all we know about her. Instead the book, narrated in the first person, is the record of various conversations with she has in which she plays a typically passive role listening to the other person’s life story and perhaps making a few comments and questions.
In the first book she visits Athens to teach a creative writing course, those she talks to include her neighbour on the plane (ex a successful shipping owner), the attendees at her creative writing course, friends, fellow teachers. The themes explored in the stories include the unreliability of other’s stories, storytelling itself, female identity, progression and improvement (and its inadequacy) but often basically people’s relationships with family.
All of the stories feature protagonists in not dissimilar positions to Faye and we realise that in some ways the stories and her reaction to them tell us about Faye by a process (one that Cusk in interviews refers to as “annihilated perspective� which is made explicit at the end of the book, when another teacher tells Faye about a conversation she had with her neighbour on the plane “the longer she listened to his answers, the more she felt that something fundamental was being delineated, something not about him but about her. He was describing � what she was not �. This ant-description � had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition; while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank �.(which) gave her � a sense of who she now was�. In the book’s last paragraph, the Greek seat-neighbour contacts her and says (as she does not want to meet� that he will spend the day in “solicitude�, which she corrects to mean “solitude� � again a key part of the book’s theme.
The second book contains some slightly weaker elements � a key part of the book is Faye’s decision to buy a very run down flat and to bring it builders to renovate and soundproof it � her elderly and hostile neighbours downstairs are unconvincing and one dimensional (and oddly do not have any story of their own � almost uniquely across the two novels), however the overall effect is still compelling. Faye’s intervention in people’s accounts of their lives (her hairdresser, her builders, one of her students, some recently divorced and remarried friends), deliberately adding her own views and seeking their perspective on it, is much greater in this book � and as a result the accounts have more of a common theme looking at change and reinvention and its interaction with freedom. She also meets a man with whom she starts a tentative relationship � and has a feeling of pulling away from a precipice.
March 31, 2019
3.5 out of 5 stars
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