Outline
Ratings70
Average rating3.7
Read my review on my blog here: https://theconsultingbookworm.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/outline-rachel-cusk/
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.
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.
Perhaps just the wrong book at the wrong time, but in any case I could not get into it.
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 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?
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.
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.)
