Showing results by author "Rachel Cusk" in All Categories

When first published in 2001, it divided female critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk's children were taken into care, that was she was unfit to look after them. Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself and the book as protests grew about its honest, gritty account of the misery of those early months. It is a seminal, stand-out book on the complications of being an ambivalent mum in an age of white-washed, Annabel Karmel'd new families.

The new novel from one of the most distinctive writers of the age, Parade sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot, to tell a true story-about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves.

In the wake of her family's collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions - personal, moral, artistic and practical - as she endeavours to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to and believe in life.

Outline is a novel in 10 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.

A woman on a plane listens to the stranger in the seat next to hers telling her the story of his life: his work, his marriage, and the harrowing night he has just spent burying the family dog. That woman is Faye, who is on her way to Europe to promote the book she has just published. Once she reaches her destination, the conversations she has with the people she meets - about art, about family, about politics, about love, about sorrow and joy, about justice and injustice - include the most far-reaching questions human beings ask.

The film star M is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M's life, in the hope of understanding who she really is. In this astonishing, explosive novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for the nature of truth without ever swerving away into self-deceptions. She investigates who we are, and pretend to be, at this late stage of modern life when we are hypnotized, more and more effectively, by the images we see everywhere.

A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships and of the struggle to live morally between our internal and external worlds.

When Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected and the surprising, all seen through Cusk's sharp and humane perspective.

Aftermath chronicles this perilous journey as the author redefines herself as a single woman and creates a new version of family life for her daughters. She discovers previously unknown strengths and freedoms but also finds herself suddenly vulnerable to outsiders, unwelcome advice, social displacement and the absence of a clear authority. The pressure to reconstruct a 'normal' life for her daughters competes with the sense that nothing feels normal at all.

Stella Benson sets off for Hilltop, a tiny Sussex village housing a family that is somewhat larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them, as au pair to their irascible son, Martin - is undeniably low. What could possibly have driven her to leave her home, job and life in London for such rural ignominy? Why has she severed all contact with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to talk about her past?

Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party. Her beauty ignites a blaze of excitement in his troubled heart. But Francine is ravenous for attention, driven by a thirst for conquest and when Ralph tries politely to extricate himself, he finds he is bound by chains of consequence from which it seems there is no escape.

Brought to you by Penguin. The short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis's short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of...

Eine Schriftstellerin reist im Hochsommer nach Athen, um dort einen Schreibkurs zu geben. Während ihre eigenen Verhältnisse vorerst im Dunkeln bleiben, wird sie zur Zuhörerin einer Reihe von Lebensgeschichten. Ihre Bekanntschaften beichten ihr Ängste, Begierden, Versäumnisse und Lieblingstheorien. In der erstickenden Hitze und dem Lärm der Stadt erschaffen diese verschiedenen Stimmen ein faszinierendes Geflecht menschlichen Lebens. Dabei offenbart sich das Bild einer Frau, die zu lernen beginnt, einem einschneidenden Verlust zu begegnen.

Arlington Park is an ordinary English suburb. Over the course of a single day, the novel moves from one household to another, revealing its characters: Juliet, enraged at the victory of men over women in family life; Amanda, warding off thoughts of death with obsessive housework; Solly, about to give birth to her fourth child; Maisie, struggling to accept provincial life; and Christine, the optimist and host of a dinner party where the neighbours come together.

Agnes Day - subeditor, suburbanite, failure extraordinaire - has discovered disconcerting gaps in her general understanding of the world. Terminally middle class and incurably romantic, Agnes finds herself chronically confused by the most basic interactions. Life and love go on without her, but with a little façade she can pass herself off as a success. Beneath the fiction, however, the burden of truth becomes harder to bear.

After the publication of Outline, Transit and Kudos - in which Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction - this writer of uncommon brilliance returns with a series of essays that offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her life's work. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, this collection is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and rewarding to behold.

Outline erzählt von Liebe, Verlust, Erinnerung und dem elementaren Drang, Geschichten zu erzählen. Eine Schriftstellerin reist im Hochsommer nach Athen, um dort einen Schreibkurs zu geben. Während ihre eigenen Verhältnisse vorerst im Dunkeln bleiben, wird sie zur Zuhörerin einer Reihe von Lebensgeschichten. Ihre Bekanntschaften beichten ihr Ängste, Begierden, Versäumnisse und Lieblingstheorien. In der erstickenden Hitze und dem Lärm der Stadt erschaffen diese verschiedenen Stimmen ein faszinierendes Geflecht menschlichen Lebens.

When 18-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury's remote family home, he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle. Years later, when he marries the strong-willed, beautiful Rebecca, he is secretly hoping to create his own version of that free-thinking family, but after the birth of their first child, their marriage begins to flounder. The chance to escape once more to his friend's country house comes as a welcome relief, until he discovers a family changed and his own romantic notions of country life begin to disintegrate....

Für die Schriftstellerin Faye ändert sich gerade vieles: Nach einer kräftezehrenden Scheidung ist sie mit ihren beiden Söhnen zurück nach London gezogen und hat bei der Suche nach einer Wohnung einem Gefühl nachgegeben, das augenblicklich verschwand. Sie erlebt täglich kleine Katastrophen auf der Baustelle, die ihr zu Hause ist, während sie sich einem Ort anzunähern versucht, den sie schon einmal Heimat nannte. Sie trifft Freunde von früher und knüpft neue Bekanntschaften, sie erfährt von den Schicksalen und Krisen der anderen, spricht über Wahlfreiheiten und Notwendigkeiten.

Faye ist unterwegs, um ihren neuen Roman vorzustellen. Sie hofft auf öffentliche Anerkennung und Abstand zu einer privaten Katastrophe. Sie begegnet Kollegen, die sich um Kopf und Kragen reden, sie bestreitet Bühnengespräche, in denen man ihr nicht zuhört, und sie gibt Interviews, ohne wirklich selbst zu Wort zu kommen. Doch je mehr sie sich auf die anderen einlässt, umso deutlicher wird Faye, was jenseits all der Geschichten und Fiktionen liegt, mit denen die Menschen sich fast obsessiv wappnen.