Outline

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.

A feeling of poignant unreality permeates Rachel Cusk's Outline, which follows Faye, a British woman recently divorced and in Greece to teach a week-long writing course over the summer. The book consists of ten conversations that she has with other people, starting with her seat neighbor on the flight over (with whom she continues to interact during the week) and ending with the next person staying in the apartment she's been put up in. In between, she talks to old friends, new friends, and her class about subjects ranging from animals to marriage and divorce. Well, more like gets talked at rather than talks to. Faye is not a big participant in these conversations, and so what we get about her is...wait for it...mostly an outline, defined more by what's going on around her than anything we see of her interiority.

This isn't an easy book to write about, because there's not a lot of “there” there. Virtually nothing happens, and since Faye is such a cipher and only her airplane seat neighbor makes more than one appearance, there's nothing to speak of in terms of character building or development. Instead, we're left with admittedly lovely writing and a lot of meditation on themes. Dislocation/unreality, processing trauma, illusions, and an unexpectedly heavy emphasis on marital relationships are explored throughout the book, and at the end, Faye heads home and back to her life in the UK without any sense that this week in her life has meant anything.

I can appreciate a book with an unconventional narrative structure, but this one never quite came together for me. Cusk uses language beautifully, you can feel while you read it that each word, each phrase was chosen with care. But the way she sacrificed plot and character development to focus exclusively on theme makes this feel like a writing exercise more than a book. There's not a story here, really. There are just words.

This isn't to say there's nothing of value. The first section of the book, the first conversation, in which Faye and her seat neighbor discuss his personal life and children and divorces, is by itself a masterful short story. And there are moments of brilliance in her descriptions...Faye finding herself thrown off-balance at the acceleration of a motor boat captured a sensation I've personally experienced many times before in a way that resonated powerfully. And some of the people in my book club, for which I read this one, really connected with it. But all I can offer here are my personal reactions and review, and for me, this didn't work. I can't recommend it, but if it's something that intrigues you, I won't warn you away from it either.

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.

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.