Second Place

3.5 rounded up

But my time belongs to me, be careful what you ask people to endure.

I'm really surprised by how much I actually enjoyed this book, there isn't much actually happening and it's entirely told in the form of someone telling someone else about it, it shouldn't have worked so well for me but it did. There's just something about the writing and the character that drew me in and kept me reading.

3.5

A peculiar, moody, curious, and mystical exploration of art, motherhood, desire, and livelihood. Cusk crafts literature beautifully and carefully, her intelligence is intimidating. I wasn't touched, I felt distance from the narrative, but I was fascinated by it's cleverness and introspection.

I stumbled across the work of Rachel Cusk through Second Place and I now feel there will be reading before Rachel Cusk and reading after. Like no other book before, it had me laughing with delight, blown away by Cusk's voice: her depth of perception, construction of conflict, connections of thought, word choice, and perhaps most surprisingly of all her use of the exclamation point. Second Place was genius.