Rachel Cusk – Cannonball Read 17

The house, like the party, was subsiding.

Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk

January 28, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is the first novel by Rachel Cusk, whose Outline Trilogy that came out in the last couple of years is about as good as any serious novel in the same time. This novel is a little different, told from the outside instead of the interior, so the effect is that it’s about a character instead of within a character. Agnes Day (yes yes pun intended) is neither a fortunate nor unfortunate young woman who finds herself in adulthood ill-equipped to not only be an […]

“Where I live, there is always someone driving slowly on the road ahead.”

Coventry by Rachel Cusk

January 3, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

If not for the fact that she’s a 50 year old British novelist who narrates female intellectualism with precision and intelligence and the mother of teenage daughters, I might be Rachel Cusk. Ok, not so much, but the first two essays of this odds and ends collection of nonfiction writing (which go from personal/political essays about the world and her orientation to it, to deeply personal essays about motherhood and the dissolution of her marriage to perfectly good but ultimately weak in comparison book and […]

He was somewhere in his forties, with a face that was both handsome and unexceptional

Kudos by Rachel Cusk

July 29, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is the final book of the “Outline” Trilogy of novels that Rachel Cusk has been working on for the last few years. The books have similar tones, narration, focus, and other elements, though they take different subjects and plot. The narrator of the novels is a writer who is not exactly working as a writer within the confines of the novels but in the profession of being a writer in the public forms of being a writing. So the first novel focuses on being […]

What she did learn from all the books was something else, something she hadn’t really been expecting, which was that the story of loneliness is much longer than the story of life.

June 8, 2018 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Transit – It’s definitely not quite right to say that Transit picks up where Outline left off, because it definitely doesn’t. It IS interesting to try to decide what Transit picks up from if anything at all. Outline, if these books do connect the same narrative across multiple texts, was about a writer and various other voices in and around a literary event and conference. Now, this book is much more situated in real life. I say real life because conferences take on a kind […]

Winding Down

December 16, 2017 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Operation Shylock – Philip Roth 4/5 Stars This is one of those books I got really excited about when I was like 20 and I bought or got ahold of and then never read. In fact, I remember sitting on my brother’s couch and reading one page and being like OH NO and not reading any more. I like Philip Roth a lot, warts and all. He’s ridiculous and writes a lot about maleness, but I am male and it sometimes connects with me. In […]

My Dinner With Ennui

January 27, 2016 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

Outline is a novel about writing and writers that seems rather thin on plot and strong on philosophical reflection. It reads more like an extended metaphor than a novel. The main character, Faye, is a writer who has flown from London to Athens to spend a week teaching a writing course. Starting before she even boards the plane and continuing through her last day in Athens, Faye encounters individuals who tell their stories without much provocation. This gives Faye and author Cusk an opportunity to […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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