Author of the Month: Rachel Cusk
Selected by the Bookshop
Our Author of the Month for July is the British novelist and memoirist Rachel Cusk.
Beginning with Saving Agnes in 1993, her work consistently explores the female experience, human subjectivity and the life of the artist, culminating in but not concluding with the experimental trilogy of ‘autobiographical fictions’ Outline, Transit and Kudos. The trilogy was followed by Second Place, of which Andrew Schenker in the Los Angeles Review of Books wrote ‘If the Outline trilogy had seemed to push beyond the novel while still working within the form, then Second Place suggests that Cusk may have outgrown the genre entirely.’ Her latest novel Parade, ‘a brilliant, stark and unsettling feat’ according to Kate Kellaway in the Observer, has just been published in paperback by Faber.
Recommended by Victoria
‘This is philosophical fiction at its peak. Parade contains four long chapters that interweave the lives of four different artists – all called G, two men, two women – with the life of the first-person narrator and her husband. Like the characteristic covers, Cusk’s prose is clean and deceptively simple while asking some of the most difficult existential questions: what does it mean to create (produce?) art? Is it anything like creating (producing?) a child? Do the answers to those questions differ depending on whether you are a man or a woman? (Parade’s answer is surely ‘yes’, but in interesting ways.) If we are creations (products?) of our own parents, what do we owe them? In true Cusk fashion, Parade is a novel in which the action is pared down to moments that could be life-changing, if only we recognised them as such.’
From the publisher:
The first in Rachel Cusk's critically-acclaimed trilogy, shortlisted for the Folio Prize and the Goldsmith Prize and longlisted for the IMPAC Prize.#14 in the New York Times '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'The first in Rachel…
From the publisher:
The second book in Rachel Cusk's critically-acclaimed trilogy, shortlisted for the Goldsmith Prize.SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE'A work of stunning beauty, deep insight and great originality.' Monica Ali, New York…
From the publisher:
The final part of Rachel Cusk's hugely acclaimed trilogy, now in paperback.'One of the most astoundingly original and necessary books I've ever read.' Guardian'A landmark in twenty-first-century English…
From the publisher:
A new paperback edition of Rachel Cusk's debut novel, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award.Winner of the Whitbread First Novel AwardAgnes Day - sub-editor, suburbanite, failure extraordinaire - has discovered disconcerting gaps in her…
From the publisher:
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021‘A classic, but with contemporary urgency thumping through it.’Claire-Louise Bennett, author of PondA woman invites a famed artist to the remote coastal landscape where she lives. Drawn…
From the publisher:
'A rich meditation: on separation, on possession, on Renaissance artists, and, inevitably, on the transformative nature of travel.'The Times'Written in prose that constantly reminds us what language can do.'Times Literary Supplement'A…
From the publisher:
A series of essays from Rachel Cusk - about choices, womanhood and art.'Cements her reputation as one of the most fierce and elegant chroniclers of how we live now.'Stephanie Merritt, Observer'Cusk is a master of the genre and her…
From the publisher:
Written in the months after Rachel Cusk's divorce, Aftermath is a masterly work charting the largely unwritten journey back to order from the chaos that is left when a family breaks apart.'An extraordinary writer of the female…
From the publisher:
Marble in Metamorphosis contemplates the physical and cultural life of marble. It explores the ethics, politics and symbolism of its use and deliberates over the spirit of the material and why some cultures so revere and desire it. In…
From the publisher:
A beautiful new paperback edition of the highly-acclaimed novel by Rachel Cusk, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize.When eighteen-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury's remote family home he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle.…
From the publisher:
The Temporary paints a merciless portrait of the cut and thrust of modern romance, work and life.Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance…
From the publisher:
A Life’s Work is Rachel Cusk’s controversial, funny and moving account of her first few years of motherhood.‘I laughed out loud, often, in painful recognition.’ Esther Freud‘Cusk has created a work of…
From the publisher:
A paperback edition of The Bradshaw Variations in a stunning new look. Thomas Bradshaw and Tonie Swann are experiencing the classic symptoms of marriage in its middle years: comfortable house, happy-enough daughter and an…
From the publisher:
Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, a darkly funny and moving insight into modern relationships, provides a glimpse behind the closed doors of suburbia.A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST…
From the publisher:
The Country Life, Rachel Cusk’s third novel, is a rich and subtle story about embarrassment, awkwardness and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises.WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM…
From the publisher:
The much-praised new novel from award-winning author Rachel Cusk, who was one of Granta’s Best of British writers.In this profound study of human relationships, five overlapping narratives of love and detachment merge to form a…
From the publisher:
Novelist Rachel Cusk explores themes of arrival, transition, and loss in this account of a time spent in Greece. Her experience of the potency and fragility of landscape leads to an examination of the moral ambiguity of human creativity.…
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