Outline cover art

Outline

Outline, Book 1

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Outline

By: Rachel Cusk
Narrated by: Kristin Scott Thomas
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About this listen

Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face great a great loss.

Outline is the first book in a short and yet epic cycle - a masterful trilogy which will be remembered as one of the most significant achievements of our times.

'Outline succeeds powerfully. Among other things, it gets a great variety of human beings down on the page with both immediacy and depth; an elemental pleasure that makes the book as gripping to read as a thriller... A stellar accomplishment.' James Lasdun, Guardian

©2020 Rachel Cusk (P)2020 Faber & Faber Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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The book is weirdly captivating— very simple story about an author who travels from London to Athens for a week to teach a creative writing course. She meets so many characters. The plot sounds boring but really it isn’t at all. It all just makes you contemplate life... Kristen Scott Thomas has great intonation and deft comic timing and gets each character down perfectly. Her accents are good too.

Great book and Kristin Scott Thomas is amazing

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I thought some of the recording quality wasn't the best, some chapters sounded a bit muddy unfortunately. The reading performance was great as this book features a lot of dialogue and talk-like prose. The accents of characters was great, the writing was beautiful.

2nd Rachel Cusk read

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Brilliant writer, one of the most intelligent original, observant writers I have read in a long time. Equally brilliant is the reading by Kristin Scott Thomas

Brilliant book and reading

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Kristen Scott Thomas' performance was the only good thing about this book. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters (with the exception of the dog-beating housewife).
Saddest thing is, because it's part of my Uni course, I'll have to read parts of it again.
Reading this book is like eating caviar - you only do it because people you admire (or who have power over you) tell you that you ought to.

Pointless

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