Outline
Ratings86
Average rating3.7
Perhaps just the wrong book at the wrong time, but in any case I could not get into it.
I might revisit my rating of this one, it didn't live up to the level of expectation I had after reading Second Place which was pretty stunning but maybe I just need to sit with it longer to truly get it?
Brilliant. Such efficient, restrained use of language. A few days in the life of the protagonist yet so much of their life unfolded to, at times, devastating effect. Strongly reccommended.
The main problem with this book wasn't that it's just some boring conversations with life stories which shouting feminism and a lot of the other isms from the very core. It is not a bad book, but too much of it was filled with excessively long-winded irrelevant details and sudden outbursts of emotions from the narrator herself which makes you grasp your head and wonder why. Another thing is that it's so full and it's so empty at the same time. As it's of typical Cusk, she me mentioned too much of marriage, divorce and feminism that you can only beam at some perturbations of side characters with younger and a more romantic perspective to life. To this, 3 stars. Although I love Cusk's prose, it's just not enough for a 4.
“...while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank.”
This line perfectly sums up Rachel Cusk's Outline. It is a book about connection, recognition, ambivalence; about the power of narrative and words; about the unshaped, the unstructured, the outlined self. I was very pleased by Cusk's experimental style, which is embodied by the characters themselves, actively avoiding order, rule, logic, shape.
“But the only hope of finding anything is to stay exactly where you are, at the agreed place. It's just a question of how long you can hold out.”
“The interesting ones are like the islands, he said: you don't bump into them on the street or at a party, you have to know where they are and go to them by arrangement.”
Let me give some personal context prior to reading Outline. I found this book in a second hand bookshop which every time I visited transported me to a sort of intimate, exclusive space where committed readers met. I wasn't looking for it, yet I had the feeling this particular book would terminate the long reading slump I wanted to get rid of (and I was right). I was also surprised to see that the previous owner of the book left a pamphlet about the rights of indigenous people in Brazil, which was probably used as a bookmark, and I immediately started to wonder what kind of person had read this book before me, what their interests and background were. Right before starting this book, I found myself doing the exactly same thing the characters did throughout this book: to connect with other people not wholly but in fragments and glimpses into multiple life stories and narratives. Another unexpected parallel I found was that both the narrator and I were travelling when the first chapter opened, and soon after I was completely immersed in the narrative.
“...but the trying – it seemed to me – was almost always a sign that one was crossing the currents, was forcing events in a direction they did not naturally want to go, and though you might argue that nothing could ever be accomplished without going against nature to some extent, the artificiality of that vision and its consequences had become – to put it bluntly – anathema to me.”
The narrative is formed through brief encounters which seem like character studies, outlines of a future novel; yet the novel already exists before it is formed. I have connected with the characters in a completely different and ambivalent way, deeply and intimately and yet vaguely and distantly.
I can't wait to put my hands on the other two works from Cusk's trilogy.
Du går inn i historien og ut av den. I mellomtiden møter du mennesker gjennom samtalene til en navnløs forteller, glir sømløst over fra den ene til den neste, med en leilighet i Aten som base for de luftige samtalene. Lett, svevende, konkret. Lesbart. Tankevekkende.
I read this while going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. Basically, coming to the realization that it's impossible to have it all. Trying to fit everything into this life only leads to anxiety.
In this book, one character after another pours their heart out to the narrator. They reflect upon their lives, often filled with regret. On the surface, it seems like they regret their failure to attain everything they wanted. But in my state of mind, I interpreted it as regret that they failed to recognize the impossibility of attaining everything they wanted. Or, they failed to recognize that they were being told to want the wrong things.
This book is filled with passages that describe parts of my life perfectly. One of the most emotionally satisfying reads I've had in a while.
Direct, easy to read, and interesting. Hard to classify - it's not a novel, and will disappoint people looking for one. It's quite original in structure.
(I will say that the cover design REALLY irritates me with it's lack of margin, but I suspect it's deliberate.)
I picked up Outline because and only because I've heard Cusk's name being dropped as a potential Man Booker Prize contender this year. If she is nominated, it will be for her newest novel, Kudos; but as her newest is the third in a trilogy, I did not want to find myself already two books behind when the longlist drops. So I thought I'd get a head start... just in case.
Man Booker Prize nominated books can come in many varieties, but it's not uncommon for the list to have several titles that are intelligent and/or relatively dry. The latter can be difficult for some, but more often than not, I enjoy them despite being slow. I cannot speak for Kudos as I have yet to read it, but man, oh man isOutline boring. I can see why some might think Cusk would be a welcome nominee. If Kudos were nominated, I'd read it, as I didn't dislike Outline or the style Cusk used to bring her story together—it was just abysmally dry.
Outline is the story of stories. It's about an author interacting with people in Athens, and telling their stories. But her stories are more like an outline of these characters. There's not much to them. They're not the most interesting stories, but I'm sure they're some kind of a reflection of the author herself. Who am I kidding? This book was so uneventful. There's beauty of words and a certain strong realism to the dialogue, but it lacks plot and character. Still, some people love it. LOVE IT. And I say kudos to them. Personally, I think I missed something, but I'd be willing to give it another go.
Read my review on my blog here: https://theconsultingbookworm.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/outline-rachel-cusk/
The narrator floats through the book revealing only the barest of details about herself - it is the observations of the people that float into her sphere and the conversations she elicits from them that make up the bulk of the book. These conversations are observed at a remove, noted with little comment, eliciting little emotion from the narrator. it's a quiet, introspective read and Cusk does such a wonderful job doing that thing we all do - it's literary people watching.