Rachel Cusk is an author whose works are known for their incisive exploration of personal and societal themes through an innovative narrative style. Her prose, often drawing from autobiographical elements, delves into the complexities of human relationships, identity, and the search for meaning in the contemporary world. Cusk probes the deep psychological states of her characters while challenging traditional narrative forms. Her distinctive voice offers readers a provocative and reflective experience.
A path-breaking novel of art, womanhood and violence, from the author of the Outline trilogy. Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. A mother dies.
La experiencia de la maternidad es una experiencia en contradicción. Es un lugar común y es imposible de imaginar. Es prosaico y es misterioso. Es a la vez banal, extraño, convincente, tedioso, cómico y catastrófico. Ser madre es convertirse en el actor principal de un drama de la existencia humana al que nadie se presenta. Es el proceso por el cual una vida ordinaria se transforma invisible en una historia de extrañas y poderosas pasiones, de amor y servidumbre, de encierro. y compasión". "En un libro que es conmovedor, hilarante, provocativo y profundamente perspicaz, la novelista Rachel Cusk intenta contar algo de una vieja historia ambientada en una nueva era de igualdad sexual. El relato de Cusk sobre un año de maternidad moderna se convierte en muchas historias: una despedida de la libertad, el sueño y el tiempo; una lección de humildad y trabajo duro; un viaje a las raíces del amor; una meditación sobre la locura y la mortalidad; y sobre todo, una educación sentimental en bebés, libros, grupos de niños pequeños, malos consejos, llanto, lactancia y nunca estar solo
Romancière qui s'est isolée depuis son second mariage avec Tony, M. n'écrit plus mais rêve d'accueillir pour une résidence d'artistes L., un peintre renommé qu'elle admire. Il finit par accepter son invitation mais se présente en compagnie d'une jeune fiancée irritante, de sa fille et du compagnon de cette dernière. Les six adultes cohabitent mais des tensionsapparaissent rapidement.
A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally between our internal and external worlds
Rachel Cusk beschreibt in ihrem persönlichen und politischen Buch die Folgen ihrer Trennung. Sie reflektiert über die Herausforderungen, als Schriftstellerin nach der Geburt ihrer Töchter weiterzuarbeiten, während ihr Mann den Haushalt führt. Cusk untersucht die Krise der Ehe, das Gefühl des Verlusts und die Suche nach neuer Identität.
NPR's Favorite Books of 2019 Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline Trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (The Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions. Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.
Cusk ist besser als Knausgård. Berliner Zeitung
In the wake of her family's collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions - personal, moral, artistic, and practical - as she endeavours to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life. Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility and the mystery of change. '[Transit] confirms that one of the most fascinating projects in contemporary fiction is unfolding in Rachel Cusk's trilogy.' Adam Foulds
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION A woman arrives in Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Once there, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives. Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voices begins to weave a complex human tapestry: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself. SHORTLISTED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE, THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE AND LONGLISTED FOR THE IMPAC PRIZE
World premiere of a new version of Euripides' classic Medea. Plays in London as part of the Almeida's Greek Season. Medea's marriage is breaking up. And so is everything else. Testing the limits of revenge and liberty, Euripides' seminal play cuts to the heart of gender politics and asks what it means to be a woman and a wife. One of world drama's most infamous characters is brought to controversial new life by Almeida Artistic Director Rupert Goold (The Merchant of Venice, King Charles III, American Psycho) and award-winning writer Rachel Cusk (Outline, Aftermath).
Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face great a great loss. Outline is the first book in a short and yet epic cycle - a masterful trilogy which will be remembered as one of the most significant achievements of our times. 'Outline succeeds powerfully. Among other things, it gets a great variety of human beings down on the page with both immediacy and depth; an elemental pleasure that makes the book as gripping to read as a thriller... A stellar accomplishment.' James Lasdun, Guardian
In her most personal and relevant book to date, Cusk explores divorce's tremendous impact on the lives of women. This unflinching chronicle of Cusk's own recent separation and the upheaval that followed is also a vivid study of divorce's complex place in our society.
"Originally published in 2009 by Faber and Faber Limited, Great Britain. Published in the United States in 2010 By Farrar, Strauss and Giroux"--Title page verso.
Cusk escapes dreary England for Tuscany, to relish the landscape, the weather, the food and, most of all, the art.
Michael first met the Hanburys of Egypt Hill when he was a young student. Twelve years later, married with a young son, Michael is invited back to the house and jumps at the chance of escaping his increasingly turbulent domestic situation.
Set over the course of a single rainy day, we follow Juliet, enraged at the victory of men over women in family life; Amanda, warding off thoughts of death with obsessive housework; Solly, who confronts her own buried femininity in the person of her Italian lodger; Maisie, despairing at the inevitability with which beauty is destroyed; and Christine, whose troubled, hilarious spirit presides over Arlington Park and the way of life it represents. Rachel Cusk's sixth novel is her best yet. Full of compassion and wit, she writes about her characters' domestic lives, their private thoughts and fears with great intelligence and insight.
A collection of pieces of memoir by contemporary international writers. Edited by the author of 'IF THE SPIRIT MOVES YOU'.
A young pregnant mother wrestles with an utterly changed life; a new father searches for a sign of the man he used to be; a daughter yearns for a lost childhood; and a mother reaches out in bewilderment to a child she can't fully understand. A rare novel that illuminates "the bustling concourses of life" without sacrificing emotional depth and complexity, The Lucky Ones confirms Rachel Cusk's place among our most incisive writers.
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book, this memoir by multi-award-winning author Rachel Cusk explores the transformative experience of motherhood. Selected as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by the New York Times, it delves into the contradictions of motherhood, portraying it as both commonplace and unimaginable, prosaic yet mysterious. Cusk reflects on the dualities of this role—banal yet bizarre, compelling yet tedious—capturing the essence of becoming a mother as a solitary performance in a drama of human existence. Her narrative reveals how an ordinary life morphs into a tale of profound passions, love, servitude, confinement, and compassion. With humor and insight, Cusk recounts a year of modern motherhood, weaving together stories of lost freedom, lessons in humility, and the roots of love. This memoir serves as a meditation on madness and mortality, offering a sentimental education in the realities of parenting—babies, books, toddler groups, and the challenges of never being alone. The New York Times Book Review praises it as "funny and smart," likening it to a war diary, describing it as wholly original and unabashedly true.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Stella Benson answers a classified ad for an au pair, arriving in a tiny Sussex village that's home to a family that is slightly larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them is low and remote. It soon becomes clear that Stella falls short of even the meager specifications her new role requires, most visibly in the area of "aptitude for the country life." But what drove her to leave her home, job, and life in London in the first place? Why has she severed all ties with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to discuss her past? And who, exactly, is Edward? The Country Life is a rich and subtle novel about embarrassment, awkwardness, and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises. Rachel Cusk's widely praised novel is a captivating tale of one young woman's adventures in self-discovery.
Ralph Loman's unexceptional life is anchored in regret by a past from which he cannot free himself. One of corporate London's transient typists crosses Ralph's path and her beauty ignites a brief blaze of excitement. When he tries to extricate himself, he is bound in chains of consequence.
Living with her two best friends in London, Agnes feels that life and love seem to go on without her. But then she discovers that her roommates and her boyfriend are keeping secrets from her, and that her boss is quitting and leaving her in charge. In great despair, she decides to make it her business to set things straight. Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel.
