Rachel Cusk marches to the beat of her own drum and she writes in her own language. This was my first Cusk and I fear my last. Cusk is innovative, talented, and lyrical. She's taking risks and I can appreciate that. However, it's just not for me. It at times feels pedantic (which feels like a really intense word to use in this case) and I find that distracting. Maybe I'd be better suited to read something different by her, I'm not sure.

The first 15 or so pages for me when I start a new book are a song and dance where I'm learning the author's voice. The words are initially jarring and hard for me to take in because we've never met before. With Parade, that feeling never went away. I'd recommend this to folks who already have a relationship with her work.

This novel challenges all conventions, making it quite difficult to find a place to anchor your understanding of it. It's told in a very fragmented way, getting glimpses into different storylines that explore similar themes. I had to restart this novel because I often fell lost in its chaos of nameless characters and unconventional structure. Nonetheless, I resonated with so many aspects of this book.

The writing was beautiful and I highlighted so many parts of this novel. The themes explored in this novel throughout the different fragments of stories were compelling; the ones that stand out the most are female identity, death, creation, and motherhood (and the traumas associated with motherhood). Yes, there are two artists named G in this novel. My brain was overheating at first trying to make sense of this, thinking that surely I must be misunderstanding or misremembering.

This book is going to be difficult to recommend widely. It's not accessible in its writing or structure, but if you embrace the fragmented nature of the novel and submit yourself to experiencing these stories, a beautiful reading experience reveals itself. This is my first Rachel Cusk book, so others more familiar with her style might find this easier to get into. Nonetheless, I am anything but discouraged from seeking out more of her books.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for providing an advance reader copy!

I am often here for intelligent discourse, philosophical speculation, and love to read discussions of the complications of women and their roles in their fields. But at a certain point, when you prioritize intellectualism and prestige over all else, your writing can fall into this ditch of clinical shallowness, and Cusk has definitely veered towards this.

These vignettes of different circumstances are all of them too briefly present to impact themselves on your memory at all, causing their next appearance to need a complete refamiliarization with the short connected bit from before, and this carouseling of unrooted scenes really causes the whole book to feel muddled and like the scenes and characters are simply one dimensional background noise to add context to philosophical and often pretentious thoughts Cusk wants to express.

This is the only work I have read by Rachel Cusk, but if I had to describe Cusk’s writing, I would be tempted to use the words “cold” and “exclusive”. She writes in a way so overly academic and intellectual that it makes you feel as if the texts common occurrence of not making sense is a fault of your own, that you are “not smart enough” to understand. I have read so many lauded and prestigious books and this exclusionary approach to writing is never one that grows on me, and plenty of valuable literary novels and books do not fence themselves off with this purposely shameful language.

I think this book could’ve been so much more conclusive and rounded if it were simply a short story collection, or even in the format of essays. The universal pseudonym of “G” inevitably became muddled in your reading, and I will almost definitively not retain any storyline in this book, just a handful of memorable and interesting lines mostly from the first half. The first half of the book is undoubtedly more enjoyable and parse-able than the second half, which to me read simply as cold pretentious pontification between characters who felt simply as just names.

I know I am intelligent, just apparently not the specific kind that can appreciate this involute of a format, and this shallow of a undertaking towards quote-able but fundamentally unreadable literature. There were a handful of touching lines that I enjoyed and that’s why I still gave it a 3 star rating.

PARADE by Rachel Cusk is an exhilarating novel exploring art, identity, femininity, violence, the body and artistic freedom through a female lens. It’s cerebral, artsy, full of ideas and existential questions, but always engaging. I think Cusk’s new book pushes the boundaries of traditional fiction more than her previous novels and the result is a work that provokes and stretches your mind.

Structured into four thematically linked sections, PARADE blurs the line between reality and imagination. In a few different scenarios, we meet several artists, all called “G,” engaged in power struggles with their spouses, families and communities over their art and responsibilities. This raises the question: are there multiple characters named G or one recurring consciousness embodying multiple artists, both real and fictional, and their conflicting viewpoints? Cusk seems to suggest the latter.

There’s no real plot, but many echoes and reversals of events. A carnivalesque parade meanders through the book, while scenes of violence—psychological abuse, a brick to the head, a fatal fall—disturb and interrupt. Sculptor Louise Bourgeois anchors two sections of the novel, with her 2022 textile exhibit at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. Works from the exhibit are refigured into the stories, sometimes comforting, sometimes disturbing. Like Bourgeois’ weaving mother-figure, Cusk weaves threads from female artists’ lives into a fractured narrative that still somehow feels whole.

Like SECOND PLACE, this novel took me some time to read and process to appreciate details and nuances. I loved reading and discussing it with friends, but you can enjoy the luminous, witty and poignant writing solo without looking up a single reference.

PARADE is a testament to Rachel Cusk’s exceptional literary abilities. It invites readers to question and engage with art, inequality, history and creativity. For those who appreciate thought-provoking literature that challenges literary conventions, it’s an essential read.

Thank you FSG and NetGalley for the early reader’s copy!

I appreciate how smart and well worded this was but I’m not sure I really got what it was trying to do? It’s all about visual art and being an artist, which I don’t always love to read about, so probably a me thing. She has a way of constructing a sentence that knocks me off my feet though, I know I’ll continue reading her for a long time even though this one wasn’t a huge hit for me.

rachel cusk's reputation exceeds her. every expectation i had for her writing and work, the reviews i've read, the readers who adore the way she brings a. story together, was blown through the roof. she is quick and rich in not just the stories she tells, but the sharpness in which she delivers every sentence, i was just captivated by her words the entire time reading parade.

to say it's a quick read would do this book an injustice. it has a complexity to it that makes it such a compelling an invigorating story. it explores gender, art, family, and identity all in just over 200 pages, in writing and structure like no other novel i've read.

it seems like the different perspectives and stories and independent from one another, that's how i felt when reading them in the beginning. however, the more i think about it, and the more i read, all of those stories do have similarities and ways in which makes the story feel more like a novel and not just short stories put together. this novel transcends the traditional ways in which we know novels to be written. it requires a space and time where reader can sit and think a read like this one for hours.

when reading a book that encompasses all these different themes, strictures, ascpects, and prose
how long will it take to grasp its reader?
about 200 pages

"This grey reality, this meeting of darkness and light across shards of broken glass, was our beginning."

Thank you, Thank you fsg publishing for giving me the opportunity to read this amazing novel and the writing of the author i've heard so much about.

*review on goodreads is linked. instagram blog review will be posted on friday june 14th at 12 pm @libraryofshamsie*

parade is a complex, thought provoking experiment in form that is impossible to distill into a simple review. i initially went into it expecting more of a traditional novelistic form, but these are more like vignettes exploring the same handful of themes about motherhood, creativity, death, etc. on my first read through i was really caught up in the excitement and expectation surrounding reading one of my favorite author’s new books, and felt like i needed to put the pieces together and figure out how all these disparate sections would come together in the end - but that’s not ultimately the point of the book. with my reread, i wanted to focus more on the themes and language, rather than plot. i enjoyed this so much more the second time around and really appreciate the challenge that cusk presents to her readers with parade. i wouldn’t recommend starting with this one if you haven’t read her before, but if you enjoyed the outline trilogy and second place, this is a great next step!

i think this quote from the spy really sums up what cusk is doing here: “His style, so uninterfering, drew attention to itself without meaning to. He rarely, for instance, showed his characters in close-up, believing that this was not how human beings saw one another… They expected a storyteller to demonstrate his mastery and control by resolving the confusion and ambiguity of reality, not deepening it.”

I love Rachel Cusk. Second Place is one of my favorite books. This book is right on point with the themes of motherhood and art. It challenged me and is beautifully written.

Rachel Cusk is brilliant and this novel absolutely escapes the idea of what a novel can be. She is able to convey so much in just 200 pages and brings the reader on a journey of discovering meanings and connections. Reading Parade was an exercise in attention and patience but it’s all because of the amount of wisdom and depth Cusk put in every sentence. It’s an endlessly quotable book that asks to be read again and again to grasp the meanings missed the first time.

Art and creation seem to be the main themes as we meet an artist (or multiple artists as they morph and change in different parts) under a pseudonym G. We get to know them sometimes in a biography style and other times through the people around them and observers of their work. The themes run much deeper with exploration of motherhood and parenthood, violence, gender roles, patriarchy, freedom or lack there of. With each part we’re unsure who the narrator is as their voice changes from ‘I’ to ‘we’ and often times separate narrations (or stories) are woven around each other seemingly disconnected but in conversation through themes deeper meanings.
Truly impressive and brilliant piece of work.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the eARC!

Thanks to netgalley and publisher for the eARC.

Cusk has a unique writing style, which is intentionally confusing with all main characters named as G, who act as object and subject of the interconnected (?) PoVs within each section.
Even though it is a fairly short book, with stories showcasing artists in various streams, it seems to touch upon numerous heavy topics which are phases of mundane life. Some of these artists write, paint, direct films. It gives us glimpses into the life of artists from various perspectives, some are commentary through the artists's eyes whereas in others they are the exhibits.
How the various aspects of life which are quite mundane to life shapes and breaks the artistic nature? How an artist has to be both attached and detached to their own lives in order to create. How these impacts the people surrounding them and how it reflects in the art.
It puts a lot of questions for discussion, (which I found quite relatable and thought provoking), but not necessarily exact answers leaning towards any sides, but makes us think and form our own opinion. Identity, gender, parenthood, family, social responsibility, it would be safe to say topics not touched upon are sparse.

Delighted to include this title in the June edition of Novel Encounters, my column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer, Canada’s national lifestyle and culture magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

I don't even know what to say about this. It's not a novel, It doesn't have a plot, It doesn't really have characters. It's a collection of snippets about art and life but it's just not coherent. I tried, honestly, but I gave up because I couldn't find anything to redeem this. I know others really enjoy Cusk, who I've always found challenging, so perhaps they're the readership for this experimental work.

Parade by Rachel Cusk

रस निष्पत्ति - शृंगार 🥰, अद्भुत😱 (in readers)
भाव निर्मिति - शोक😪, रति 🥰( in characters)

Ever wondered if Life could start at death. Your children would nurture you and you foster your parents ( well in a way we still do it, but you know what I mean)

"We realised that the death of our mother’s body meant that we now contained her, since she no longer had a container of her own. She was inside us, as once we had been inside her. The pane of glass between herself and us, between the dark of outside and the day of inside, had been broken. We recognised the ugliness of change; we embraced it, the litter-filled world where truth now lay. This grey reality, this meeting of darkness and light across shards of broken glass, was our beginning"

Now read the starting para again. Did Cusk make you think that. She gives you visions, times when you see things which you never would. She makes you believe in possibilities, so many of them

The end becomes the beginning & middle, tributaries. The circle keeps on moving as you keep on exploring her words & probabilities, much like G

A collection of 4 stories ( semi fictional/ autobiographical) G is a painter painting his nude wife upside down or G is trapped in unhappy marriage & motherhood. A filmmaker G who works anonymously or G whose work, temperament elucidates thru conversation of art enthusiasts

But then do you actually believe that Cusk would simplify it so much for you. Though these characters are there but they are so much more than this

Author's writing is fragmented, utterly layered, actual or factual. G can be 1 or an amalgamation of many. There are many narrators or maybe only 1 donning different hats. There is 'I' and lots of 'We'

For the 1st story Cusk picks up on artist Louise Bourgeois ( earlier referenced in her book Kudos). Though unnamed in Parade, she had written contextual essay for the catalogue of Bourgeois's artwork

Parade is about art, artists, strong women, vulnerable ones, Q.'s about marriage, motherhood, Identity, life, death, beginnings & ends

"Art, rooted in insanity, transforms itself through process into sanity: it is matter, the body, that is insane"

Read it coz you have no choice

P.S.

Sharing below a link to one of the story of the novel that has already appeared in New York Times ( the story is very much similar except minor changes)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/the-stuntman-fiction-rachel-cusk

There is also an essay which Cusk wrote for the catalogue of Louise Bourgeois Art work. Unfortunately it is not on public platform. When I read it, it provided such a great insight into understanding this book.

Will advise to refer various articles and insights when reading this book. While it will definitely help in understanding the narrative better, it will also reaffirm the fact that how great Cusk as an author is. So lucky to be born in times as her

Thank you so much NetGalley and Farrar Straus and Giroux for the advanced review copy

I can't even begin to tell you all how much I loved every single page of Parade by Rachel Cusk. It is, in fact, my new favourite novel of hers. 

Parade is a tricky one to describe, as it does not follow one storyline, but a few. However, in each one there is a focus on a different artist, all with the name 'G'. Throughout the whole book and within each chapter/storyline, there are overarching themes of motherhood, identity and what it means to be a woman. 

One factor I particularly enjoyed was that the women are portrayed throughout this book as consistently isolated. Even when they are wives, mothers, successful within their careers, there's always this sense of seclusion and almost lack of control within their own lives, which was really interesting to see fold out within each different character.

Definitely one of my favourite books this year, it 100% gets a 5/5 rating.

Rachel Cusk is undoubtably and undeniably brilliant. I think I mentioned that during my last Cusk review, but it is worth mentioning again.

Maybe this one was just a bit too brilliant for me? I must be honest – the first entire section left me confused. If I weren’t so lazy, I would have just reread it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I read that section in little spurts without getting into her flow. What a mistake. All the artists in this novel are named G. I didn’t realize I was reading about two (I hope just two??) people in that first section for a hot minute. However, once I finally got into the rhythm of the writing, I found I enjoyed the second and third sections the most.

The story jumps from artist to artist in different settings and explores gender, art in all forms, and ethics. Cusk has stunning prose and truly wonderful ideas. I desperately wish I could have dinner parties with discourse like that in the Parade section.

I liked parts, but not the sum of them. I would not recommend this to anyone who hasn’t read Cusk. Yet, if you are a Cusk superfan, I have a feeling you’ll eat this up.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC.

I’ve been hesitant to write a review because I’m scared it’s just going to be me gushing over Cusk and how useful is that for anyone? That is the tl:dr though - five stars. Loved it. Get it. I read this on my own in one day and survived. You can too! I promise! You’ll probably end up with a million notes, but it’s worth it.

The other reason I’ve hesitated is because this book is bigger than its parts - how do I try to make sense of it within a character limit? Divided into four parts, Cuskian topics abound: motherhood, art, gender, identity, reality, perception, representation, repression, death, and shame. There’s a recurrence of doubles and reflections. The idea of a narrator or even a static character is thrown out the door. We’re not always sure who is narrating. Sometimes it's “I”, sometimes it's “we”. Are we all part of a whole? Can we only ever be a small part of ourselves at a time? Breaking bits of ourselves off as we travel through time and space. The character G is ever changing, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. Sometimes based on real artists, sometimes a made up amalgam. Always going through existential dread it seems! I knew this book was going to be special when, in the first section, it took me a paragraph or two to realize we had switched perspectives. It was so erratic that I had to go back to see how it happened. All of this is reflected in the narrative itself, fracturing at multiple levels.

Cusk is playing with form, mixing fiction, and semi-autobiography with her essayistic style. I don’t know how else to describe it, but reading Cusk makes my brain tingle in the best way. No one writes or sets up conversations like she does - she immerses you in the scene as if all these bits of chatter are flying by you. At the sentence level she sparkles, putting into words thoughts or worries I’ve had in a way I never could. I found this to be the perfect blend of Outline and Second Place.

Is this book for everyone? No.But do you want to be reading that kind of book anyway? I do think it’s worth opening yourself to it and trying to figure out this puzzle. The book’s meanings are expanded and found as more readers join the fray.

A thought-provoking, beautiful, and narratively confusing book. Broken up, both in terms of its parts (4) and its many subjectivities/POVs, this book is full of lovely turns of phrase, especially for such a short work. Cusk's ability to write insightful and concise sentences is impressive and my arc is full of highlights!

I've only read Second Place from her, which has a similar focus on art, obsession and (particularly female) identity. While I enjoyed the discussion of art in this one, I didn't find the feminist ideas in the book particularly intersectional or nuanced, My enjoyment mainly came from the writing style.

Thank you to the publisher for the e-arc!

In a conversation in 2019 with The Louisiana Channel, Cusk said, somewhat jokingly, “I find fiction difficult to read. I’m more interested in reading philosophy.” (Rachel Cusk Interview, 14:02-14:10). Two years later, in response to what she’s working on next with the Booker Prize, she responded, “I’ve been writing short pieces about art and artists. I like the essay form and the intricate opportunities for development it offers.”(Booker.com) On June 18th, her forthcoming novel, Parade, hits the shelves. To those who have followed Cusk up to this point, she kept her word.
Parade is all these things and more. The novel, though more a novel in another definition like something genuinely new, is broken into four sections: The Stuntman, The Midwife, The Diver, and The Spy. It is a profoundly philosophical endeavor that follows the lives of many artists—all named G—combined with first-person narration using “I” and “we.” Like Cusk’s previous works, Parade is deep in auto-fiction territory. Cusk blends auto-fiction with real-world and fictionalized accounts in way that is singularly her own. It is a stunning work that requires the full attention of the reader.
Half of the novel has already been published, with one essay in Harper’s and another in the New Yorker (both pieces published in 2023); they are repurposed a bit to fit the rest of the book. The difference between these pieces and those in the book is that they name the real-life artists Cusk is inspired by. In Parade, Cusk drops their names and replaces them with G for the greater use of the narrative. Doing this is necessary to tie it all together. This shows that the dissection of the female and male, their alliances, and their troubles in how they deal with art are what is at stake and discussed in the work. The real-life connections and the artists' naming do nothing to further Parade’s march. Do I mind that, let’s say, 40% of the book was already published? Not really. The writing is multi-faceted that reading it a second time will only yield more enjoyment.
Much like the Outline trilogy that thrust Cusk into the “generational talent” acclaim, Parade follows the same passivity from Faye, the narrator of the Outline trilogy, but there are several narrators this time. Parade’s topics are many and are critically analyzed in a way that pushes the issues of her previous novels from speculation to intense focus. Motherhood, gender roles and identity, an artist’s relationship with art, marriage, and how children implicate one’s life are all topics that Cusk has written extensively on during the Outline Trilogy. Still, they are cranked up to the absolute maximum in Parade without being repetitive in the slightest.
It is both a light and dense book: Light in the way that her prose is brilliant and a page-turner, and although the ideas are not light, as a reader, you somehow feel protected because of the psychic distance. Dense in the way that it requires you to really pay attention, as Cusk is working on many levels. You have to have mastery of the English language to get what Cusk is saying. Although any intelligent adult can intellectualize Cusk’s prose if they apply detailed attention, I, humbly, state that the more life experience, the better when taking on one of her books, especially this one. I don’t think I’ve lived long to appreciate some of the nuances. With the Outline Trilogy, Cusk expanded the horizons of what a fictional novel could be, and Parade takes the concept further.
The significance of the letter “G” is never explained in the novel, but the importance that every artist is named “G” is imperative to Cusk's structure. In each section, we are met with an artist named G. In two parts, the artist is female, and in two segments, the artist is male. We changed POVs throughout that time, from just various G’s to “I” and then to “We” and back again.
Why use “I” and “We” in the narrative structure? In the third section, which is almost entirely a dinner party at a restaurant in Bilbao, Spain (not confirmed, as no locations are, but given the research I’ve done based on the prose), a conversation among gender arises and how men and women differ. A character discusses how the artist, G, sees it:
I know a lot of women who assume that the men they live with will be financially responsible for them, Julia said. It’s true that usually they have children, and most of them talk about it as a deal they made at the beginning, but the deal is always the same, that the man will earn the money while the woman allows her career and her ambitions to take second place. Sometimes, I have been jealous of these women, she said, because I live without a partner and support myself and my daughter, and to be able to live your life without considering every action in the light of practical necessity seems to me an almost unacceptable privilege. At other times I see that the absence of necessity weakens their ambitions, and that they allow themselves to become unprepared to survive alone. Their lives are so gendered, she said, it is almost as if they trust gender more than anything else to tell them how to live. One of the things that interests me about G’s work, she said, is that she treats both sexes as doomed by gender, as almost interchangeable in that sense, so that a third sex emerges in which the man and the woman have merged into each other and become neutral. The couple, in other words, becomes a kind of two-headed monster with little children dangling from its sides. (Cusk pg. 151).
That use of a “we” first-person POV could be explained in that passage. In an academic paper chronicling the choices of French great Annie Ernaux, who is famous for her usage of “we”, cites that she prefers a “collective rather than individual remembering.” (Baisnée pg. 4). The “we” then works doubly then serves as a means to filter both the “female” and “male” gendered experience plus this idea of a witnessing and a remembering that goes beyond these constructs and into something else entirely. To take this idea even further, in the final segment of the novel, the last artist named G, says this about the landscape of art, praise and judgment, and experience:
When they brought out something new, it was compared to the last thing they had done; it was praised or criticised on that basis; a familiarity, a form of ownership had been established that permitted judgement. Why was it impossible to create without identity? Why did a work need to be identified with a person, when it was just as much the product of shared experience and history? Some of his friends became bolder and more arrogant with success. Their voices grew louder, their opinions and convictions began to entail a kind of deafness. Watching them, G felt a curious sense of isolation, as though he alone could see and hear. In being and defending themselves, they cloaked the world in their subjectivity. He began to understand that the discipline of concealment yielded a rare power of observation. The spy sees more clearly and objectively than others, because he has freed himself from need: the needs of the self in its construction by and participation in experience. (Cusk, pg. 185)
Cusk's work is partly hedged on characters inhabiting all these things and being free of them all at once. Everything is about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Cusk describes very granular ideas about motherhood using “I” but then widens them through different narrative choices, either by having another character dissect those choices made by one narrative, combining two narratives, etc. She essentially tells the same story through multiple perspectives by using conversation between characters and then between narrators as the four sections press on.
The saliency of Cusk’s work goes without saying, and Parade presses on. She operates in a space where few others (possibly no one) who are as known as her, do. Her writing is experimental and skeletal in its construction in many ways but still portrays everything and anything one could hope to ask for when they pick up a book. She subverts and inverts what it means to write fiction, and has the prose to back it up. I am looking forward to the interviews as there are many questions I'd love to ask her about her choices.
Parade, out June 18th, is indeed a novel in every sense of the definition. I'm looking forward to holding it in my hands.

Thank you so much to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this. Cheers!

















Works Cited:
Baisnée, Valérie. “‘I Am She Who Does Not Speak about Herself’: The Impersonal Autobiography: European Journal of Life Writing.” “I Am She Who Does Not Speak about Herself”: The Impersonal Autobiography | European Journal of Life Writing, ejlw.eu/article/view/31512/28891#toc. Accessed 23 May 2024.

Cusk, Rachel. Parade. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. June, 2024.

"Rachel Cusk Q&A." The Booker Prizes. 2021, https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/rachel-cusk-qa.

Vorm, Tonny. "Interview: Rachel Cusk." YouTube, uploaded by Louisiana Channel, August 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGg6BGIHuM

“Art is the pact of individuals denying society the last word.”⁣
⁣
“G made a painting of her husband sleeping, and the whole history of women painted asleep in beds the artist has clearly just vacated was quietly mocked.”⁣
⁣
From: 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦 by Rachel Cusk⁣
⁣
Before reading 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦, I had only read (and loved) Cusk’s 𝘚𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦. Her writing is extraordinary and non-conventional and seems like something you have to learn to enjoy, but it is so worth your time. ⁣
⁣
Parade uses the lives and observations of four different artists - male and female, all named G - to discuss art, the way it is perceived and how that perception is affected by gender, especially femininity and motherhood, both on the side of the creator but also the beholder and even the subject of creation. It reads at times like a story, a novel with (auto)biographical elements, but on occasion more like an opinion piece or essay, where she first argues one side of a theme and then flips it around to argue the other side too. ⁣
⁣
I was struck again by Cusk’s insightful analysis of life, especially life in the arts. I loved reading the conversation that takes up most of part three “The Diver” and all its anecdotes and different aspects of being an artist or living with an artist. It was all incredibly interesting to me and I couldn’t stop reading. On the other hand it felt like a treasure trove that I was uncovering and that made me want to slow down and really appreciate all that was being presented to me. ⁣
⁣
Even though it is quite a different setup, the “anonymous” artists and the power dynamics involved in the making and distribution of art reminded me a lot of X in 𝘉𝘪𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘟 by Catherine Lacey. ⁣
⁣
I can totally see that this book will not be for everyone, but if you’re anything like me and you don’t mind the challenge and puzzles that great literature can offer you, then I am sure you will enjoy this too. ⁣
⁣
Thank you @fsgbooks and @netgalley for the advanced reader copy.

Cusk is the queen of deeply analytical and reflective fiction writing. Her sentences are sharp philosophical musings that demand full attention from the reader (I will admit this is a reason I need to reread the second half of the book to grasp it better).

The thematic philosophical elements of the story and its characters are the backbone of the narrative which takes its form as a novel told in alternating stories, more or less. The first half of this book I found to be more engaging than the second, personally. Really intriguing questions asked from Cusk of the nature of reality, identity, art and representation of life through art and the self, gender, motherhood, and so so much more. There’s a dinner scene about midway which I took to be an Easter egg or call back to Outline nestled within the book. Overall, I think a good handful of prior readers of Cusk’s work will find a lot to love of this newest one, as well, as long as they are in the ride for a thinker. I don’t really recommend this book for readers who haven’t read her work before.