{"id":5926,"date":"2015-12-14T11:27:12","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T11:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5926"},"modified":"2015-12-16T12:47:25","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T12:47:25","slug":"outline-by-rachel-cusk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5926","title":{"rendered":"Outline by Rachel Cusk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Faber & Faber UK, Farrar, Straus & Giroux US<\/strong><\/p>\n

256pp, hardcover, \u00a316.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Caroline Sanderson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every reader should have a few troubling writers in their life. Writers who niggle at you and mess with the truisms you\u2019ve grown fond of. Ever since I read A Life\u2019s Work<\/em>, her bravely navel-gazing non-fiction book about motherhood, Rachel Cusk has been one of those writers for me. Even more so now I\u2019ve read her bracing and brilliant and odd novel Outline<\/em>, shortlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women\u2019s Prize for Fiction.<\/p>\n

The narrator of the novel is a woman (only late on do we discover her name) who flies to Athens to teach on a one week writing course. I say \u2018narrator\u2019, but actually she is an indistinct figure; like the artist whose self-portrait appears in the mirror in the background of a painting. And \u2018all\u2019 that really happens in Outline<\/em> is a series of conversations between the \u2018narrator\u2019 and various interlocutors who cross her path during the week. They include the billionaire she lunches with in London just before leaving; the thrice-divorced man she sits next to on the plane, thereafter referred to as \u2018my neighbour\u2019; Ryan, her fellow tutor; a Greek feminist novelist of some renown; and the students in her creative writing class.<\/p>\n

The \u2018narrator\u2019 in fact says very little, while the observations and confessions of those she encounters dominate, along with their thoughts on life and relationships, and also on writing (\u2018Writers need to hide in bourgeois life like ticks need to hide in an animal\u2019s fur: the deeper they\u2019re buried, the better.\u2019)<\/p>\n

It threw me at first, this technique. When will we properly meet the \u2018narrator\u2019, I kept wondering. When will the camera switch its focus? But it never really does. It is Cusk\u2019s skill as a novelist that nevertheless allows us to gain an intimate knowledge of her narrator, a woman whose encounters with the world render her indistinct, ambivalent and often invisible. \u00a0Her responses to those she meets, though sparsely recorded are devastating in their sense of abdication of will.\u00a0 \u2018I was beginning to see my own fears and desires manifested outside myself, was beginning to see in other people\u2019s lives a commentary on my own.\u2019\u00a0 \u2018I thought the whole idea of a \u201creal\u201d self might be illusory: you might feel\u2026as though there were some separate, autonomous self within you, but perhaps that self didn\u2019t exist.\u2019 \u2018I had come to believe more and more in the virtues of passivity, and of living a life as unmarked by self-will as possible.\u2019 \u00a0Nevertheless, she says, she is, \u2018trying to find a different way of living in the world.\u2019<\/p>\n

I found myself drawings comparisons between Outline<\/em> and Sheila Heti\u2019s How Should a Person Be?<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>another \u2018philosophical\u2019 novel about \u2018how to live\u2019 which I reviewed for this site two years ago. Reading it was a chaotic, exasperating experience. Despite glints of insight, it felt brittle and self-indulgent and showy. Outline, <\/em>on the other hand, is the real deal. It is a stealth bomber of a novel. You can barely see it, but its aim is devastating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Caroline Sanderson<\/p>\n

* A 2015 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Every reader should have a few troubling writers in their life. Writers who niggle at you and mess with the truisms you\u2019ve grown fond of. Ever since I read A Life\u2019s Work<\/em>, her bravely navel-gazing non-fiction book about motherhood, Rachel Cusk has been one of those writers for me. Even more so now I\u2019ve read her bracing and brilliant and odd novel Outline<\/em>, shortlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women\u2019s Prize for Fiction […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5926"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6418,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5926\/revisions\/6418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}