This was my first Cusk, and I enjoyed it but it took me some time to get into - which is difficult when the book is only 198 pages.

Overall, I get the fanfare with Cusk’s writing and style - there were some passages in this book that took my breath away, and some that were so smart I had to reread them to truly understand the author’s point.

I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.

Parade was a great Rachel Cusk novel. I appreciated the look at writing and the role it can play in life. The writing was excellent.

My first Cusk book did not disappoint. Thought provoking and beautifully written. I will be getting into more of her work soon.

I did a lot of thinking reading this book. I thought about why it was always a woman selecting to be invisible or portrayed ugly or criticized. I thought about why women prefer to be depicted that way or they accepted that portrayal.

Rachel Cusk does this to me. She makes me question why women are more willing to accept what life throws at them while men throw fits. Her writing has that nonchalant tone that makes me wonder whether she pity these women or betrayed by them.

If you liked her other work, you'll surely love this one too. I did not get so much of the collection of stories from this book; stories felt more connected than I thought.

Rachel Kushner's newest book ditches the wonderful detail of Outline for broad statements about gender and power. Her archetypes reflect the characters she's written previously. There was little to love in this book, with the exception of a later, delightful character who breathes life into the pages and stands out among the sadsacks.

I enjoyed this book overall. However, when I listen to audiobooks, I am typically multi-tasking. I am doing laundry, dishes, working out, cleaning, etc., and I found this book to be hard to follow. This is definitely a personal oversight on my behalf. I also own the physical book, so about halfway through I started tandem reading the physical book while listening to the audio and had a much more enjoyable experience. This is nothing against the book, I just think it's one you really need to devote your full attention to in order to understand the complexities.

It is hard for me to say exactly what this book is about. It has an interesting structure where instead of one story it includes several vignettes that flow along a similar theme. I had very high hopes for this book because I really loved Outline by Rachel Cusk but this did not live up to that book. Some of the small stories were more interesting than others and I had a hard time understanding what Rachel Cusk was trying to say. To me, the book was a little bit all over the place. As expected, the writing is beautiful but this book did not keep me interested like Outline did. The themes of art, family, love, gender, etc. were interesting but the structure of the book made it hard for me to connect.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

I was rather impressed by Second Place last year, it was the right mix of erudition and plot. Parade is more fragmentary and there was too little narrative for me to hold on to. It's a relentless stream of intellectual observations on art, death, roleplay, gender and much more.

I've known for a while I am a lazy reader who likes ideas to be attractively packaged in an engaging story. Like the latest Kunzru or Han Kang.

The prose is very clean, so it is not hard to follow, it is just the content and density of the ideas that requires work. And then, it is a peculiar and rather cold world view that Cusk has and not all of it resonates with me.

So, this was not for me and my rating reflects my personal enjoyment and not the quality of the book.

This should also definitely not be listened to on audio: it requires reflection, pause, concentration, patience, re-reading...much more so than Second Place.

A Woman is violently struck in the head while out one day. This in turn alters her perception of reality. How a man could do such an act is believable, but for a woman to do such a thing is unfathomable. It is how society has always seen women as non-existent other than to burden the faults of men. This violent woman has changed how The Woman imagines herself and how she has been taken advantage by her husband G. G who paints people with only his own goal in sight and how he views them. He has little to no regard for the person he is painting, it is all for the art and his success.
Overall rating 2/5
This book was just not for me. However, I can appreciate the sentiment that Cusk was trying to portray. The Wife is never given a name making her almost irrelevant just as sees herself before the accident. This poetic style of writing was beautiful but it was a constant push and pull. Which ultimately left me baffled as to what was happening. If you can read beyond all the metaphors and appreciate the nuances this book is for you.
*Thank you to Rachel Cusk, Macmillan Audio, and Netgalley for the audio copy. I am freely leaving my honest review.

This was my first work by Rachel Cusk and it was definitely interesting. The writing was like a stream of consciousness. Every little thought that came across her mind must have ended up written on these pages. I will certainly be checking out more of her work.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with the audio-arc of ‘Parade’. I couldn’t have been more excited!

I just love Rachel Cusk’s brain! What a stimulating novel. I loved the shifting scenes, use of the identifier “G” for multiple artists, and the exploration of mothers, motherhood and the artist, and art in general. In another author’s hands this might have been clunky, confusing or unsuccessful — but the eternal professional, Rachel Cusk crafts a compelling plot, unique scenarios and characters and tells a universal story. I was blow away.

The audiobook is brilliantly narrated by Genevieve Gaunt who voice is just a dream to listen to. You might have expected, as did I, that having mo visual cues for the different perspectives might have made it hard to follow because of these devices like “G” as a name for multiple characters — but I found it very easy to follow.

One of the story lines in particular resonated with me. It was that of the dying mother. She positions herself in the family in a strange position of power through her limitations, and she uses that to withhold her love, and control those around her. I know I’m not alone in recognizing this woman as my own mother, but wow, it just got to me. But the themes of the creative mother, female identity in male dominated spaces, they were so terrific to explore in all their complexities. I wish I had had a physical copy as well, it would be tabbed, highlighted and written all over.

Big brain energy, for sure, but a terrific experience all around! So grateful to have picked this up.

This was my first read of Rachel Cusk's and to say I was anticipating it GREATLY would be an understatement. Unfortunately, though, this one didn't meet the high expectations I had set for it.

While I can appreciate a "banality of my wealthy suburban woman" book, I think I fell out of love with this one's writing style. It felt very purposely disconnected, but left me as a reader feeling severed from any kind of investment in the plot.

Will this stop me from reading more of Cusk's works in the future? Absolutely not!

3 stars (because I think this was an "it's me, not them" situation)

A collection of four stories within one, Parade is a look into what it means to be an artist, a man, a woman, a parent, a child, and a critic. As Cusk explores the lives of several artists, all under the pseudonym, G, she breaks the walls of convention of her genre.

I’ll be honest that I struggled with this one, and it seems I’m not alone. I was tracking with the first artist’s story, when suddenly the story switched to different characters discussing a different artist (also named G), but this time, a woman. I spent so much time contemplating if this was the same artist that I missed half the plot.

Each of the four sections of this book are equally dense, and listening on audio only made things more confusing, as I lacked the text structure of headings, chapter breaks, etc. If you’re going to tackle this one, please read the physical book.

This book truly lacks a narrative structure, but certain themes repeat: the life of the artist, the critique of art, the role and guilt of the parent and child, and the experience of the sexes and how art functions between them. It seems to be adding up to something, but truly, I think you’d need to read it several times to find it. For some, that’s where reading comes alive, but for me, it felt more frustrating than rewarding.

There are many things I appreciate about Cusk’s writing, but as with all things experimental, a lot of components have to work correctly together in order for the experiment to succeed. I don’t think we got that here in Parade.

I only made it through the first book of the Outline trilogy, so perhaps Cusk just isn’t for me. Generally speaking I tend to like experimental prose, and I thought the structure here was one of the book’s best elements, so in that way it’s no exception to my usual preferences.

It’s the content where this one failed to grab me. Asking whether a woman can be both a mother and an artist isn’t exactly new material for novelists, and while I’m not opposed to hearing more on the topic, I didn’t get anything new on it out of this. To me, Cusk mostly ignores setting in the ways that matter to me as a reader, so I need something unique or at least grabby out of the content, and when you strip away the unusual structure, the story is pretty tropey.

A lot of this feels a bit stagey, and I’m usually not a fan of anti-capitalist rants dropped into novels. It feels largely shopworn and performative here, as it so often does when it isn’t carefully married to the rest of the book in context.

Parts of this were funny and wryly observant and certainly the quality of the writing in the purest sense is good. If you just love Cusk’s work this one will probably work just fine for you, but I didn’t get much value out of it.

An interesting book, I listened to the audiobook and think I would have preferred to read it, due to the format of this book. It's not exactly a linear story, so I was a bit confused at first since all the artists in the book are just called "G". Themes of identity, art and being an artist, motherhood and womanhood.

I enjoyed this book -- it was my first by Rachel Cusk but I've been wanting to read her for awhile. I listened to this one and the narrator was excellent -- I loved her.

This isn't as much a novel with a typical format, it is more a novel as connected stories - slices of different lives.

I loved Rachel Cusk's writing and especially how she wrote about grief -- both for someone very close to you and for a stranger whose death you've witnessed/felt the impacts of.

I loved her insights on motherhood -- they were well articulated and really spoke to me.

All the discussions of art, and creating, in multiple formats were really lovely -- I enjoyed listening to those. I will definitely check out more by Rachel Cusk and I'm glad I listened to this one.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

Through interconnected sections, Parade walks us through an artist starting to paint upside down, a woman attacked and observed by her attacker, the children of a recently deceased mom confronting the stories she told, and an artist taking different pseudonyms to hide his work from his parents.
I can’t bring myself to write an actual review for this one. If you’re familiar with Cusk you’ll recognize the novel’s Cuskness from its topics, but the form pushes everything to a different level. I initially listened to this on audio, knowing that I would be re-reading. I think the audio makes for a good overview of the plot as much as there is one. The eyeball re-read I immediately jumped into once I got the finished copy allowed me to go deeper. The text in Parade is waiting to be parsed, pondered on and begging to be discussed.
The novel is told in four sections, with multiple nameless characters, shifting perspectives and non-linear storytelling. There is always a G in all the narratives. While some Gs contain nods to the real world artists (I’m hoping over time people more acquainted with the art world will identify all these nods), the collective of Gs overall end up painting a fascinating portrait of an Artist. Along with that Cusk also plays with the relationship between the narrator and the narrative, the observer and the observed. I’m also loving seeing reviews and others’ approaches to Cusk, and love how Parade shifts as it’s being observed and engaged with.
While I think this can be read as a standalone, there is definitely something to be gained if you’ve read Cusk’s Outline Trilogy.

This novel (not sure when to call something a novella) is a series of short somewhat interconnected short stories - some are a bit abstract in concept but all are easily readable. I personally enjoy Cusk’s work, I think her writing is beautiful - you can spend your time highlighting so many sections just to go back to reread when you have time. While this latest novel can be a quick read because it’s a short 200ish pages, you really do want to savor it and think about it while you read; if you read too quickly (which I tend to do) you will miss something because of the way she uses language. I thought listening to some of it on audio would make me lose something but it actually worked wonderfully and the narrator did a great job. Her last trilogy was somewhat autobiographical so this new one was a bit different but I liked it. In my opinion, this author is a bit like Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, not everyone likes her, but those who do will enjoy this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC to review

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.

To aid in my understanding of this novel, I requested the audiobook advance copy to listen alongside my reading of the novel. The narration was excellent and it helped me wrap my head around many aspects I had missed the first time I tried reading this novel.

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 the publishers of both the book and the audiobook for providing an advance reader copy of both formats!

While I absolutely consumed this book in only a couple quick sittings, I know I'll be digesting it for a while. I've been hearing about Cusk for a number of years now, so I was thrilled to be able to read her latest early. It didn't disappoint. Parade is certainly a capital L literary fiction, and I mean that as a compliment. Cusk is undoubtedly able to craft a phrase. Two people can exchange a just few lines, yet somehow those lines encompass a world of meaning. I know she often writes about art, women, personhood, and many other topics that are present in this book too, but I found the idea of being turned upside down to be the thorough line of Parade, which intrigued me greatly. I loved how the concept of being turned upside down was explored both literally and metaphorically, as well as by internal and external forces. The audiobook experience was wonderful, It might even be ideal for this type of story, where the narratives flow together like water. One person relaying the story to you with only subtle differences in their inflections feels true to Cusk's attempt to collapse the form of the novel. You need to stay present, but once you're on board and able to do so, it's a rewarding read!