I don’t know if all this makes sense at all. A way of being in the world without needing to belong to any particular place, person, mental territory. I long to acquire that calmness, that quiescent state of mind that only age, perhaps, allows.

It sounds more like a state of acquired wisdom after having lived to the fullest, after having experienced all sorts of emotions, feelings, happy events and sorrowful times. She simply lets herself – and the others – be. She registers what people say, what they tell her without ever judging, without imposing her views or her will. To a certain extent, the way this woman-narrator goes about her life is exemplary: She has found balance – or so it seems – in a kind of detached outlook towards places, objects, humans, animals. Instead, and again against my predictions, I keep hearing the voice of this mature woman (in her late 50s perhaps?) who seemingly has gone through many things in her life – loves, hopes, disillusionments, loss, grief. I thought the book wouldn’t stay with me for long, since the stories told in there were not particularly interesting to me.

Only when I finished it, though, I understood the mastery with which the author created her female narrator's voice.

I must confess I didn’t particularly enjoy reading Rachel Cusk' “Outline,” a book which at times I found boring and a bit repetitive in its formula. Cusk’s original and powerful writing captures brilliant and startling insights into facing a great loss and the trauma of change. And Kudos (2018) has been called “intellectually entrancing” ( The Globe and Mail), “radical and beautiful” ( The New Yorker) and “bracingly compelling” ( Vogue).īrought together in one exquisite collection, this groundbreaking trilogy follows Faye, a novelist facing divorce and family collapse, as she teaches creative writing in Athens, rebuilds a family in London and travels to European cities for literary events-along the way meeting people who help to reveal the merit in suffering, the fear that accompanies mysterious, inescapable change, and the hope of new possibilities that open from it. Transit (2017), has been called “dreamlike” ( Toronto Star), “extraordinary” ( The Daily Telegraph) and “a work of stunning beauty, deep insight and great originality” ( The New York Times Book Review). Outline (2015) was a finalist for both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Rachel Cusk’s ambitious Outline trilogy has received acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. “These novels are among the most important written in this century so far.” - The Globe and Mail

Outline transit kudos