A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking–about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own … contrast their own fictions about their lives.
Rachel Cusk’s Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. 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 a great loss.
Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people’s motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk’s finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years.
A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
One of The New York Times’ Top Ten Books of the Year
Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail
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I received this in a giveaway. I am not sure if it is something I would have bought on my own just by reading the cover, But man am I happy that I got the chance. I am at a lost really on how to explain this book. It’s not that it is bad because it’s not its intriguing. It’s one of those books you start to read and think there’s no way I’m going …
Outline by Rachel Cusk is not a romance. This is the narrative of life after the dust has settled and the unthinkable happens, the realistic experience that goes into creating a new, more experienced heroine. I recommend this to all those who have undergone or watched the life and severing of meaningful relationships, whether romantic, parental or …
Outline begins when a woman on a plane bound for Athens is prodded into conversation by the man sitting next to her who narrates the history of his failed marriages. We learn that the never-named woman, a writer, has been invited to teach a creative writing course; her Greek students will all write their short stories in English. Each of the …
Throughout our lives we struggle to identify our Raison d’être – Our reason for being. Socrates proclaimed that the unexamined life is not worth living—To know thyself is to know others and through interactions with others, we can know ourselves. The Outline is our unexamined self often colored by how others see us, our ever-shifting paradigms and …
A series of encounters that are mesmerizing conversations. Unconventional form that works. The use of language is stunning. But most importantly it is a book that made me think about important things.