Rachel Cusk
Kudos by Rachel Cusk is the third and concluding book in her trilogy which began with Outline and Transit. As is the case with the first two books in the trilogy, there is very little action. And just as in the previous novels, Faye narrates in the first-person point of view.
Faye is visiting a couple of European countries to participate in writing conferences and festivals. It begins as it did in Outline with the narrator on an airplane where the passenger in the next seat shares his thoughts. In this instance, the passenger discloses his feelings of being an outsider in his own family before launching into the circumstances surrounding the death of his dog. From there the narrator goes to hotels, conference locations, restaurants, etc. where she interacts with other writers, interviewers, agents, publishers, conference organizers, and various personalities in the literary culture.
And, just as she did in previous novels, the narrator engages in self-erasure. She seldom offers a comment or an opinion. Instead, she listens and records, casting her lens on the individuals she encounters, each of whom embarks on a feat of intimate self-revelation and self-analysis. They share their views on a range of topics including Brexit; failure in marriage; raising children; divorce; custody battles; socially-constructed gendered norms and the struggle to transcend them; the relationship between suffering and works of art; and the changes in literature, the reading public, and the publishing industry. Many of the conversations have in common a “then and now” tenor, in which a character expresses his/her understanding of the circumstances as they happened at the time and how that understanding has now changed. These vignettes are tinged with sadness of things that have been lost. They are fascinating and pregnant with reflections that give one pause about one’s own life and views.
The monologues are akin to a relay. A character reveals intimate details about his/her life and opinions and then passes the baton to another character who enters the scene and proceeds to share his/her opinions. Meanwhile, the narrator observes the physical attributes and mannerisms of each speaker, listens, and records while virtually erasing her presence from the scene. She is an astute observer of human behavior and a sympathetic listener, seldom offering an opinion unless she is asked.
With her carefully constructed prose, Cusk’s slowly draws the reader in to overhear the monologues. This is the same technique she used in the first two novels of the trilogy. And because we are now familiar with it, the novelty of this style of writing doesn’t have quite the same punch as it did when first encountered in Outline. But the vignettes continue to reveal fascinating observations of human behavior.
Toward the end of the novel, one of the speakers describes a church ravaged by fire. She expresses her initial anger that the church still holds the scars of the fire. Then she describes this image:
“But then I noticed,” she said, “that in certain places where statues had obviously been, new lights had been installed which illuminated the empty spaces. These lights,” she said, “had the strange effect of making you see more in the empty space than you would have seen had it been filled with a statue. And so I knew,” she said, “that this spectacle was not the result of some monstrous neglect or misunderstanding but was the work of an artist.”
This striking image is a metaphor for Cusk’s consummate skill as a writer. She erases herself to provide an empty space for others to shed their light on human behavior. It is truly the work of an artist.
Highly recommended.