6 September 2025

Rachel Cusk. Outline. 

In addition to the themes, overtly discussed, of objectivity, reality and illusion, and fantasy, the question of utility and progress seems to loom somewhere in the shadows. And yet, much of the book appears to be constructed upon superfluous details that ranges from the mundane to the extreme, absurdist and hyperbolic. This deluge of detail leaves the reader wondering what the "use" of the book itself is, what, in fact, we have gained from temporarily existing as the "helpless passenger[s] of [Faye's] vision" (210). The final chapter seems to finally offer a semblance of some much awaited sense of meaning and conclusivity: aptly dedicated to the idea of "summing up," it seems, indeed, to "sum up" and give weight to the untied knots and threads of the book as a whole. But no sooner do we sense the conclusivity that the meaning once again evades, escapes our reach. Conclusions continue to exist only as illusions.

Overall, the book imprints itself to my mind most distinctly as "viscous": it stands still despite progressing forward, "paused in an atmosphere of extraordinary pallor and thickness." It is full of profound utterances and yet no particular utterance has stuck.

I do not think the book is intended for the general reader. It touches too much on high literary themes, seeming, in fact, at times, to be almost too self-reflexive. It is too overt in its metacommentary, not subtle enough, drawing overtly on themes of objectivity/subjectivity, reality/illusion etc etc.

I am left wondering about the choice of narrative technique. It goes without saying that it is a book trying in some way to address the concept of mediation (to what degree of success, I am not sure): the use of indirect speech means nothing if not a reassertion of the subjectivity of the very narrator who seems to want to vanish from the narrative altogether. It is interesting to think about how this impacts our view of the characters, who all seem almost to sound the same, whose thoughts have been ordered, arranged, and interpreted through Faye's writing. See, for instance, the nameless anorexic's single line of direct speech on p. 246, which sounds nothing like the rest of her "speech" (the lack of subject, the use of slang are not how I had imagined her to speak). Speaking of namelessness, I wonder also about the status of names: there is a palpable scarcity of names throughout, Faye's is only mentioned once (perhaps in reflection of her own self-denial as a narrator, her almost ascetic displacement of herself. It is only on the boat that we perceive a glimpse of her solidity). It is a clever, albeit perhaps a slightly too formulaic a move to end the novel with the arrival of another woman writer: a gesture towards one's own replaceability, and a reminder that life continues to move on, progress forward.

Note the insistence with which Faye resorts in her writing to nature imagery. What is the status of nature in the novel?