Wow. What power this author has. I’d not read anything by Cusk before this, though part of her trilogy had been noted on my to-read list. She is another thoroughly unique and powerful Canadian voice now hailing from the British Isles. What about that last scene? Is that a statement completely in tune with the state of the world today? Or not?
I cannot speak to what the book means in the larger trilogy, and can’t even speak to what this book means outside of the trilogy. It is just a fantastic read, the language so streamlined and uncluttered, and one can go back to it again and again and pick out pieces which lead to a theory. Finally, female voices to face off more well-known male authors…and I think of Americans, John Updike and Philip Roth, writers of the male experience.
The narrator in this novel, an author also, did not speak, so far as I could tell—well, only to answer questions. Her observations are internal. We just get someone who answers a question the long-way-round, with a heartfelt saga that moves the air in the room and subtly changes us.
Cusk made me laugh. What about the gaunt man at the literary soirée who looked as though he’d undergone a failed surgery? He’d only stopped eating so much and was now exercising. He was trim in fact, not gaunt at all. His hair, which had looked so windblown and as though he’d just risen from his hospital bed and rushed to the party, was in fact artfully arranged with spikes and whorls like a young man’s. His suit was the baggy style popular now, in an expensive lightweight fabric--a type of silk maybe--that looks well in a boxy cut. He was having the time of his life.
Our narrator was doing a book tour, undergoing a series of interviews, some back-to-back. One interviewer came armed with only one question: “What did you notice on your way here?” I laughed because I had done the same thing once, though I rarely interview authors. The author was Nigerian first, British second, and American third and was feted in all three countries. I’d read every interview I could find in all three continents and over a period of thirty years. I was prepared…I was over-prepared. I had nothing original to ask; I could only ask questions about what he was noticing now about his life in Chicago. He never answered. Maybe one day he will write a book in response.
It is not hard to imagine what Cusk thought of the Brexit vote. An author at the literary soirée has an opinion: “It was a bit of a case of turkeys voting for Christmas,” he said. Indeed. And of the reviewer who wanted to be a writer himself? He couldn’t stand the mediocrity of successful writers. He’d never begin a work without knowing exactly where it was going, anymore than he would leave the house without his wallet and keys. Of course. People preferred his savage reviews to his fiction. I guess everyone could see where he was going.
Cusk says so much about the state of the world without saying a thing about it, just by reminding everyone of Louise Bourgeois—how she was discounted and ignored for so long and how really, the worst possible thing to be in today’s world is an average white male of average talent and intelligence. Surely they feel the pressure, and can imagine the abyss that faced so many of us in the past…the looking-past, the discounting of one’s lived experience, the so-whatness of it all. What goes around comes around.
Consider this characterization:
“She was a tiny, sinewy woman with a childlike body and a large, bony, sagacious face in which the big, heavy-lidded eyes had an almost reptilian patience, occasionally slowly blinking.”I had to read that description several times before I could put together all the seemingly-disparate features. Which is how one feels when one enters a big city: it is confusing and unfamiliar and how does it manage to work?
This is ravishing, mature, adult, female, intelligent writing. Now suddenly I am thinking of Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan, both of whom are terribly amusing while sharing truths we can all recognize. This is literature. Go there.
Below please find reviews of Cusk's other works, in order:
Saving Agnes, 1993
The Temporary, 1995 (not reviewed yet)
The Country Life, 1997
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, 2002
The Lucky Ones, 2003
In the Fold, 2005
Arlington Park, 2006
The Bradshaw Variations, 2009
The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy, 2009
Aftermath: On Marriage & Separation, 2012
Outline, 2014
Medea, 2015
Transit, 2016
Kudos, 2018
Coventry: Essays, 2019
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