National Bestseller * A Finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * A Finalist for the Goldsmiths Prize * Longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award * One of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Fiction Books of the Year A New York Times Book Review Notable Book * Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Guardian, BOMB Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Commonweal, Southern Living, NOW Magazine, … Guardian, BOMB Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Commonweal, Southern Living, NOW Magazine, The Washington Independent Review of Books, Book Depository, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post (Canada)
The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of 2015
In the wake of her family’s collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of this upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions–personal, moral, artistic, and practical–as she endeavors 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.
In this second book of a precise, short, yet epic cycle, Cusk describes the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one’s life, and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.
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The second book of the Outline trilogy is as good as the first. Her paragraphs are filled with beautiful sentences. Here is an example of the magic she appears to effortlessly weave:
“They were so carefully and beautifully wrapped that the sight of them had caused me to feel a disproportionate sadness, as though what lay beneath the wrapping was not some toy or game but innocence itself, the innocence of good intentions that would eventually be worn out or discarded once they had been exposed.”
As in the first book, the protagonist, Faye, gains insight into her life in transition – Moving to a new home includes a renovation that becomes an apt metaphor. There is an insightful conversation with the Polish contractor. Her divorce is explored via her children and a hilarious and slightly frightening dinner party at her cousin’s home. Cusk’s dialogs are brilliant considering Faye again is the good listener. She learns most about herself via her colleagues at a writing conference, her friendships, children, and the continuing examples of the male/female dynamic and dating. I’d just finished Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and was struck by the parallel themes. Also, the Socratic theme of the “examined life” in the pursuit of knowing oneself continues. I was also struck by a question of Fate vs Free Will which reminded me of Kafka on the Shore, my favorite Murakami. I think if Rachel Cusk came to dinner we would have a lot of favorite authors and novels to share. In both Outline and Transit (I’ll be starting Kudos today) are the metaphysical ideas that run though the ancient teachings originating in Greek philosophy. She relays her conversation on a date:
“I had been thinking lately about evil, I went on, and was beginning to realise that it was not a product of will but of its opposite, of surrender. It represented the relinquishing of effort, the abandonment of self-discipline in the face of desire. It was, in a way, a state of passion.”
Well, I thought I had posted a review of this wonderful book, but I must not have saved it, so I’ll do the best that I can from memory. Transit is the second book in Cusk’s Outline trilogy. This book is better than the first, so I can hardly wait to get to the third and final installment, Kudos. The main character is a successful female writer. Outline traced her travels to Greece to teach a creative writing course. Cusk used the novel to demonstrate, in a way, the writer’s process of outlining her story. The protagonist’s role is primarily to listen to the stories of others–the passenger sitting next to her on an airplane, the students in her class–and record them. In other words, the writer’s primary task is listening and observing, gathering potentially usable information, then shuffling all the material into the loosely organized shape of a developing novel. Transit focuses more on the writer herself at a point of transition in her own life. She has returned to England, her marriage has fallen apart, she’s getting a bit bored with the book talk circuit, and she’s ready to reassess and rebuild–much as an author would do while working on a draft. Her rebuilding takes a literal form as she moves out of the central city and into a seedy fixer-upper in a rather unsavory part of town. There are two problems: the contractors who call to give estimates for the essential repairs are dubious as to whether the house can really be fixed up, and the elderly couple who live downstairs are are every neighbor’s worst nightmare. She finally settles on a pair of Polish builders who assure her that they can handle both problems. In the meantime, she deals with her two young sons and their not-all-that-involved father, the writer’s conference from hell, and friends who just don’t understand why she decided to leave the city. While we still see her sitting back and observing the whirl of events around her. we also see the writer herself as a developing character, one taking on the task of rebuilding her life and revising her approach to it and to others.
Cusk seems to be having a lot more fun with Transit than she did with the first novel. There’s more humor here (the book festival episode is at times hilarious), and her characters are more defined. The writer herself does a good deal of self-assessment. Terrific writing here as well! I can’t wait to read the next installment. I’ve been stuck in some not-so-great books, so I may just have to spring for the full price rather than waiting for a sale or for a library copy.