The third volume of Cusk's fiction trilogy is what first introduced me to Cusk. I am astonished I’ve not been badgered about her constantly—she is so funny, so illuminating, so exacting. My enthusiasm for Kudos prompted GR friends to insist I read the three-books-in-one so I picked up Outline.
I’m pleased I read the third book first. It is even better than the first by orders of magnitude, though I’d feared I’d begin to see the seams if I read all three books at once. Never mind. Cusk has talent enough to hold one’s attention easily, and I can see where the last scene in the trilogy comes from…not from nowhere as I’d imagined.
Cusk manages to carry the conceit through to the end—“what did you notice on your way here?”—though she places it in the hands of different actors as she carries on illuminating for us the nature of relationships and marriage, of meaningful work and children, of money and it’s opposite. Only the supremely confident could laugh at “those who have,” all the while exposing how little they in fact have.
So the notion of ‘outline’ in this story is not revealed until the end, when two people sitting next to one another on an international flight find themselves talking. One person is often doing the asking, the other…sometimes asks questions back, but only if they’ve been trained to do so as a result of their lives. The answers to questions about one’s life give the questioner the opportunity to occupy the ‘negative space’ as it were. That is, they did not have the experiences being related, so only an unfilled-in outline of who they are remains until someone asks something about them.
We learn in the last book in the trilogy that negative space, when properly illuminated, can look like it has more there than when it actually contains something. It is a notion, and Cusk may be saying that she is not trying to steer this thing, this novel…"not trying to convince anyone of anything"…because she is done feeling capable and competent and sure of her skill. But really, there is plenty she does know, and plenty her girlfriends know, about how they want to be treated, or not treated. They deserve to be carved in marble and dressed in soft-looking garments and set in an alcove, even if headless. Like goddesses at the Agora in Athens.
What strikes me is that the narrator has much more to say in this novel than she does by the end of the trilogy. In this novel she is commenting on the actions and decisions of her ‘neighbor,’ the man she met on the airplane, often enlightening him when she thinks he is being self-delusional. He understands her criticism to mean she cares. “What is fatal in that vision is its subjectivity…the two of them see different things.”
The three novels of the trilogy were published in a relatively short period of time, the first in 2014, the last in 2018. The outline of the main character is filled in gradually, illuminating what she is not…not a wife any longer, but a mother still, not a writer so much as a teacher (or the other way around?).
Stay tuned.
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
Tweet
No comments:
Post a Comment