And she did so almost through negative space, with her narrator providing data culled from others, rather than assertively telling a specific story. Such was the richness of the world she made. Two volumes later, I felt like a sea creature immersed in an aquatic ecosystem of Cusk's making. At no point does Cusk engage in 'Watch this!' gimmickry. Despite its novel tone, it never cuts bait with function. The form is endlessly intriguing and begs for repeated readings. For Cusk, the problems of writing have continued to parallel the problems of living. Rachel Cusk’s new novel is about a writer M who invites the artist L to stay with her. The result is a novel approach to the form of the novel, that nevertheless flows effortlessly. The trilogy was an attempt to erase personal identity, or at least to give the self less space.

But we never receive a full biographical background for our narrator. When author Rachel Cusk wrote A Lifes Work, her disarmingly frank account of motherhood, she was shocked by the vicious reaction it provoked from other women. The writer interacts with others, and they volunteer their life experiences, which provide philosophical commentary on life and love and time.

The book was striking for its narrative tone, told from the point of view of a traveling writer whose voice and expression were almost entirely void of personal, emotional content.

Two years before Rachel Cusk published the first novel in her acclaimed Outline Trilogy (2014–18), she wrote a searing account of her divorce, entitled ‘Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation’, which ignited a brouhaha in her homeland, the United Kingdom.Details: 71, See More Collapse The dramatic excoriation of marital life aroused apoplexy among critics and readers they bristled at Cusk’s subjective and one-sided storytelling, as if any other account of divorce were possible. It wasn’t the first time Cusk’s work had raised eyebrows: her memoir, A Life’s Work: On becoming a mother (2001), offended many a book-club member with its frank and unflattering descriptions of motherhood. If the invisible narrator of the subsequent Outline novels was an attempt to move away from story and subjectivity, Cusk remains no less obsessed with these ideas. In Coventry, a new collection of memoir, literary criticism, and essays, which includes ‘Aftermath’, Cusk explores the way story – who controls it and its relationship to the truth – shapes our reality. The most compelling contribution is the titular essay, in which the word ‘Coventry’ refers to the English idiom of ‘being sent to Coventry’, meaning to be ignored and isolated.

Trilogy rachel cusk