Like many others of my Goodreads friends, I re-read just ahead of the publication of the concluding book of the trilogy which this book commenced. My Like many others of my Goodreads friends, I re-read just ahead of the publication of the concluding book of the trilogy which this book commenced. My original review of this and the first volume Outline is below – on this reading I enjoyed finding quotes which summarised for me either Rachel Cusk’s underlying technique in writing the trilogy, or the choice of title for the first two volumes.
In those days he was a sketch, an outline; I had wanted him to be more than he was, without being able to see where the extra would come from. But time had given him density, like an assist filling in the sketched-out form.
They had arrived ... At the place where for each of them a relationship usually ended, and set out from there.
It's a bit like a revolving door ... You're not inside and you’re not outside
Reality ... could serve in the place of fantasy as a means of distracting people from the facts of their own lives
I said that if she was talking about identification, she was right - it was common enough to see oneself in others, particularly if the others existed at one remove from us, as for instance characters in a book do
They were more like thoughts, thoughts in someone else's head that she could see. It was seeing them that had enabled her to recognise that these thoughts were her own.
Sometimes it seemed that the junction was a place of confluence; at other times, when the traffic thundered constantly over the intersection in a chaotic river ... It felt like a mere passageway, a place of transit.
The translator was a woman of about my own age .... I had watched her create her own version of what I had written ... Sometimes talking [with her] about certain passages in the book, I would feel her creation begin to supersede mine, not in the sense that she violated what I had written but that it was now living with her, not me. In the process of translation the ownership of it .. had passed from me to her. Like a house.
My eye continually drawn ... To the strange cloudscape that appeared to belong neither to night nor to day but to something intermediary and motionless, a place of stasis where they was no movement or progression, no sequence of events that could be studied for its meaning
It suggested that the ultimate fulfillment of a conscious being last not in solitude but in a shared state so intricate and cooperative it might also be said to represent the entwining of two selves. This notion the unitary self being broken down, of Consciousness not as an imprisonment in one's own perceptions but rather as something more intimate and less divided, a universality that came from shared experiences at the highest level
For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only through absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality
I like it that you ask these questions she said, but I don't understand why you want to know
I remembered the feeling of tension in the room, which seemed to be related to the provisionality of the situation
When he thought about his life he saw it as a series of attempts to lose himself by merging with something else, something outside him that could be internalised
It was hard to listen while you were talking, I had found out more by listening, I said, than I had ever thought possible
I felt change far beneath me, moving deep beneath the surface of things, like the plates of earth blindly moving in their black traces
Outstanding and innovative novels, the first two parts of a planned trilogy.
The books are narrated by a writer and now creative writing teacher, a recently divorced mother of two boys – this together with her name (Faye) mentioned only once in each book is almost all we know about her. Instead the book, narrated in the first person, is the record of various conversations with she has in which she plays a typically passive role listening to the other person’s life story and perhaps making a few comments and questions.
In the first book she visits Athens to teach a creative writing course, those she talks to include her neighbour on the plane (ex a successful shipping owner), the attendees at her creative writing course, friends, fellow teachers. The themes explored in the stories include the unreliability of other’s stories, storytelling itself, female identity, progression and improvement (and its inadequacy) but often basically people’s relationships with family.
All of the stories feature protagonists in not dissimilar positions to Faye and we realise that in some ways the stories and her reaction to them tell us about Faye by a process (one that Cusk in interviews refers to as “annihilated perspective” which is made explicit at the end of the book, when another teacher tells Faye about a conversation she had with her neighbour on the plane “the longer she listened to his answers, the more she felt that something fundamental was being delineated, something not about him but about her. He was describing … what she was not …. This ant-description … had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition; 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 ….(which) gave her … a sense of who she now was”. In the book’s last paragraph, the Greek seat-neighbour contacts her and says (as she does not want to meet” that he will spend the day in “solicitude”, which she corrects to mean “solitude” – again a key part of the book’s theme.
The second book contains some slightly weaker elements – a key part of the book is Faye’s decision to buy a very run down flat and to bring it builders to renovate and soundproof it – her elderly and hostile neighbours downstairs are unconvincing and one dimensional (and oddly do not have any story of their own – almost uniquely across the two novels), however the overall effect is still compelling. Faye’s intervention in people’s accounts of their lives (her hairdresser, her builders, one of her students, some recently divorced and remarried friends), deliberately adding her own views and seeking their perspective on it, is much greater in this book – and as a result the accounts have more of a common theme looking at change and reinvention and its interaction with freedom. She also meets a man with whom she starts a tentative relationship – and has a feeling of pulling away from a precipice....more
Originally written novel which takes the voice of the eponymous social-misfit, sex-offender and his Irish mother who has exiled him to London to get aOriginally written novel which takes the voice of the eponymous social-misfit, sex-offender and his Irish mother who has exiled him to London to get away from the risk of either prison or being beaten up. The book is mainly told in Martin John’s voice and includes lists, one sentence chapters, and lots of repetition of key phrases and ideas, designed to convey the obsessions and circularity of his thoughts.
The book perhaps drifts for too long, and although there is some narrative progression in the second half - the very narrative loses some of the stronger sense of the first half without actually giving any real narrative resolution.
Eily, an 18 year old Irish girl (sexually abused as a child), comes to London to study a drama school – making a conscious decision to loser her virgiEily, an 18 year old Irish girl (sexually abused as a child), comes to London to study a drama school – making a conscious decision to loser her virginity, she starts a relationship with a middle aged actor Stephen (as it turns out reasonably well known, albeit living in an old run-down flat). The book effectively documents their turbulent and sexually charged relationship – including a lengthy account by the actor of his past (emotionally then physically then, as a teenager, sexually abused by his mother which leads him to a life of sexual and substance abuse – and one relationship which lead to a child, who now lives in Canada) and then a second account by his ex-lover and mother of the child of her views of him and the relationship with the daughter.
Most of the book – particularly the first half is written in McBride’s unique and experimental style, one inspired by method acting (something which is explicitly referenced through the story) – effectively a stream of consciousness/speech and feelings, interior and external monologue’s combined. When read once, holistically and quickly proves both readable and to give a reasonably strong impression of what is happening, but which when individual sentences are re-read makes close to no sense at all. Much of the action is sexual between the two protagonists (or Eily and others) or written under by Eily under the effect of alcohol or strong emotions or self-harming.
There are two very different styles when Stephen finally tells her all about his past (in huge detail) and when he more briefly recounts the conversation with his daughter’s mother. Although very unpleasant in subject matters these parts ground the book more and add an emotional (possibly slightly melodramatic) angle to Eily and Stephen’s story which when it resumes is in a modified version of McBride’s style – somehow reflecting the way in which the relationship of the characters (and their ability to face up to their past and how it has affected them) has changed.
By the book’s end this has become a conventional love story conducted and retold unconventionally by two deeply damaged individuals, as well as a book which clearly is partly autobiographical in its treatment of what it is like to live in London.
The key character is Dr Morayo Da Silva, an elderly Nigerian emigrant living in San Francisco – ex-wife of a Nigerian ambassador who subsequently fellThe key character is Dr Morayo Da Silva, an elderly Nigerian emigrant living in San Francisco – ex-wife of a Nigerian ambassador who subsequently fell in love with a Brazilian cultural attaché, then a professor of literature and still a voracious reader (and re-writer of books – both in style and to explore alternate and more positive endings for female characters). Her once poor but otherwise idyllic home town in Nigeria is now the scene of religious massacres. She still sees herself as young, indulging in sexual fantasies, driving a sports car and dressing extravagantly.
In the only real plot in the book she falls over and ends up in a care home. The book is narrated in the first person, but only sometimes in her voice and sometimes in the voices of those with which she interacts including: a homeless young girl; Reggie Bailey a retired Caribbean economics lecturer now caring for his wife who has Parkinson's disease and is in the same home as Morayo, with whom a mutual attraction starts to form; a Palestinian cake shop owner; Bella a care-home nurse from a rich background in Nicaragua; Touissant the care-home stand-in chef; Sunshine – her much younger friend with a symbotic relationship of care. Through them in addition to their own stories we also see Morayo as others see her – amazing for her age but still elderly and frail.
Although in my view (although clearly not that of the judges) lacking the innovation that the Goldsmith requires, this is a very enjoyable story with a memorable lead character and remarkable for being dense on characterisation in less than 120 pages....more
Now deservedly the winner of the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award.
I first read this book when it was shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmith PrizeNow deservedly the winner of the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award.
I first read this book when it was shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmith Prize, an award it deservedly went on to win. My original review is at the end of this review.
At the time there were two side issues that caused some debate
A) Had it been overlooked for the Booker or was it in fact not eligible
B) Why was a major plot revelation included on the back cover blurb (see below) and not either included in the book or omitted entirely.
At a reading by all the Goldsmith author's it came up that the book was not eligible for the Booker as it had not actually been published in the U.K.
A brief chat with the author at the drinks afterwards confirmed that the statement that the book's narrator is unknowingly dead was deliberately placed in the blurb so as to place the reader in a greater state of awareness than the narrator, and that as the book is in the first person the author did not think it should be placed in the text.
The book has now been published in the UK and made the 2017 Booker longlist as a result, but with Marcus's death no longer mentioned on the back.
I have just re read the book as part of my longlist read through. Overall I enjoyed the book as much if not more the second time around.
This time I particularly enjoyed looking for the clues scattered through the text about Marcus being dead, and his own occasional awareness that something is not quite right.
there is something strange about all this, some twitchy energy in the ether which has affected me from the moment those bells began to toll
why these thoughts [about death notices and burials] today, the whole world in shadow, everything undercut and in its own delirium, the light superimposed on itself so that all things are out of synch and kilter, things as themselves but slightly different from themselves also, every edge and outline blurred or warped and each passing moment belated, lagging a single beat behind its proper measure, the here and now beside itself, slightly off by a degree as in a kind of waking dream in which all things come adrift in their own anxiety so that sitting here now fills me with a crying sense of loneliness for my family ... their absence sweeping through me like ashes.
These grey days after Samhain when the souls of the dead are bailed from purgatory for a while by the prayer of the faithful so that they can return to their homes and the light is awash with ghosts and ghouls and the meaning between this world and the next is so blurred we might easily find ourselves under to shoulder with the dead, the world fuller than at any other time of the year,as if some form of spiritual sediment had been stirred up
this day has done nothing but drive me desperate into a grating dread which seems so determined to conceal its proper cause and which is all the more worrying since ther is no doubt whatsoever of its reality or that it is underwritten in some imminent catastrophe
nothing coming through at all but the certainty of being wholly displaced here in this house, my own house, and the uncanny feeling of dragging my own after-image with me like an intermittent being, strobing and flickering
I also enjoyed the hints as to the reason for his death
my line traceable to the gloomy prehistory in which a tenacious clan of farmers and fisherman kept their grip on a small patch of land .... men with bellies and short tempers, half of whom went to heir graves with pains in their chests before they were sixty
And picking out Marcus's own anger and short temper: against the interference of politicians, the opportunism unscrupulous contractors, the media coverage of the water poisoning, his sister and father, his daughter's exhibition. Although on the day of his death, he is remarkably happy and almost euphoric (despite catching a newspaper back page on the tragedy of Barcelona's reclamation of Fabregas).
Other themes and motives I enjoyed were:
- How Marcus relates the world to his engineering background and predilection, so that for example the Roman Catholic catechism has the whole world built up from first principle, towering and rigid as any structural engineer might wish, each line following necessarily from the previous one to link heaven and earth step by stepand how it is clear that for him engineering is subconsciously a way to make sense of the world and impose order on it, and to counter his natural tendencies to anxiety and apocalyptical dread, tendencies exacerbated by the financial crash and by the water contamination outbreak, but tendencies he also decries in his two children in their reaction to the latter.
- The perspective on being a father both of young children and of growing children starting to make their own way in life, as well as on being successfully married for many years.
Finally he clearly thinks actuaries are well dressed as seeing his artist daughter in a sensible coat he remarks that she looks so sharp that has she been someone else I would not have been surprised to hear that she worked in some sort of financial services job, insurance or something, some career where the value of the present moment is wagered against some unknowable future
Hugely recommended.
ORIGINAL REVIEW
The book is set on November 2nd 2009 (one day after All Souls Day and one year after the Irish financial crisis) and is narrated by a 49 year old civil engineer (Marcus) who works for a local council in County Mayo and lives in a small village with his teacher wife and two children – Agnes a conceptual artist (whose first exhibition is extracts from small court cases written in her own blood) and Darragh who is backpacking and fruit picking in Australia and whose unwillingness to engage in a career frustrates Marcus.
The subject matter of the book is largely conventional – its style anything but.
From the blurb we intentionally (on the author’s behalf) learn what Marcus only realises as the story ends – that he died of a heart attack around 8 months previously.
Further the book is written in a single, almost unpunctuated, sentence of Marcus thoughts roaming back and forth in time and with paragraph breaks commonly midsentence after “extension/joining” words. The book is though very easy to read and reproduces well the idea of someone’s thoughts flitting from subject to subject, picking up on and drawing out associations and memories. The book mainly explores the family’s past and recent history (including a severe food water contamination bug which strikes his wife) and Marcus’ job and interactions with the local pork barrel politics.
Generally a really excellent book – perhaps drifting a little in the middle, but uniquely capturing a normal life in an innovative way which is at the same time immediately natural and realistic....more
Sofia and her mother Rose are staying in Southern Spain – where they have come (having taken a mortgage on Rose’s house) to a famous clinic owner Dr GSofia and her mother Rose are staying in Southern Spain – where they have come (having taken a mortgage on Rose’s house) to a famous clinic owner Dr Gomez who Rose believes offers the only hope to her mysterious illness (a part physical, part psychological inability to walk due to paralysis of feeling in her feet). Rose is from Yorkshire originally, but married a Greek who later divorced her and cut off all contact with Rose and Sofia, marrying a girl 40 years his junior (and only 4 years older than Sofia) shortly before inheriting a shipping business and having another daughter. Sofia ia an anthropologist by training but works in (and lives above) a coffee shop as a barista, her life seemingly on hold and in thrall to the hypochondria of her needy and manipulative mother.
The other characters in the book include: a student lifeguard, whose main role is treating tourists for jellyfish stings; Ingrid - a muscular German girl who runs an embroidery business (both of these become Sofia’s lovers, but with Ingrid their seems a mutual fascination bordering on obsession); Ingrid’s English boyfriend Matthew who coaches executives for shareholder presentations and is convinced that Gomez is a quack but also seems to want to pressure him to recommend pills developed by one of his US pharma clients; Gomez’s daughter who acts as her assistant but also paints, and who seems a potential alcoholic – Matthew becomes obsessed with her; Sofia’s ageing and increasingly religious father, his wife struggling with breastfeeding.
The writing is as languorous as the balmy Mediterranean heat and the narrative serves more as a device to set up a series of tableaux filled with striking imagery: Ingrid using an axe to strike the head off an snake that attacks her; Gomez’s white marble domed clinic which at the end Sofia sees as a spectral breast; a top embroidered for Sofia by Ingrid which she thinks says beloved but then find means beheaded and she later believes refers to Ingrid’s desire to behead her obsession with Sofia; Rose’s mother happily walking along the beach, or clearly aware of sensation in her feet when she is not aware she is observed; Sofia abandoning Rose on her wheelchair in a road with a lorry approaching; the jellyfish stings which become a form of purgatory for Sofia – and almost like slave whippings; Sofia’s father’s wife nipples cracked by the feeding of the baby, and Sofia’s lips cracked by the sun and sea; a chained dog which Sofia releases but she then thinks has died; Sofia’s inability to drive – but when she does learn the only gear that she cannot master being neutral.
The images pile up but are internally consistent and coherent building a picture of female identity and motherhood which makes this an excellent and memorable read.
Towards the end of the book Sofia muses on her various characters
“Am I self-destructive, or pathetically passive, or reckless, or just experimental, or am I a rigorous cultural anthropologist, or am I in love”.
A clear theme in the book is medusas: in Spain jellyfish are called Medusas. The last two paragraphs of the book draw heavily on this imagery and almost sum up the entire book.
Her mother says
“You have such a blatant stare … but I have watched you as closely as you have watched me. It’s what mothers do. We watch our children. We know our gaze is powerful so we pretend not to look” – drawing on the idea of a Medusa as Greek God (linked of course to Sofia’s paternal descent) turning people to stone by their stare as Sofia and her mother Rose have held each other petrified by their strange relationship.
The ending of the book says
“The tide was coming in with all the medusas floating in its turbulence. The tendrils of the jellyfish in limbo, like something cut loose, a placenta, a parachute, a refugee severed from its place of origin”
Which summarises many of the themes interwoven through Sofia’s account....more
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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2016-goldsmith-shortlist
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