- Rachel Cusk has many enthusiastic fans, as I sort of am, but she is also immensely frustrating. I wrote this about her last novel, Second Place, published in 2021: 'I was profoundly disappointed. This effort is tedious and uninspiring....It may well be a damning critique of pinched, miserable, cold and unlikeable lives in an uninspiring society. But in any case it's still a tepid rendering.'
- Parade, her new novel, is thankfully a lot better. It's brilliantly written, and while its central focus is much the same, its essential theme and message is more clearly articulated: life as a woman in a world dominated by men, and life as a child dominated by authoritarian and abusive parents. The escape route is art and creativity.
- It's a challenging read. The deliberate confusion in her story-telling is characteristic. Names are occasionally dropped but their identities rarely clarified. Narrators remain nameless, and artists are just known as 'G'. Time periods are fluid. But we soon understand that these details are irrelevant. Realism is a contested terrain.
- There are four loosely connected stories, each running for about fifty pages. There is violence, abuse and the creativity that emerges from it. 'We might find ourselves washed clean of the violence of gender…to unsex the human form’. Another reflects on the physical body: ‘The ageing bourgeois couple trapped unto death in their godless and voluntary bondage is the pedestrian offspring of history’.
- The third story is by far the most interesting. It's called The Diver: a couple have dinner at an Italian restaurant in Paris with friends who work at an art museum. A man had committed suicide there that day. It was very distressing and their discussion is utterly invigorating. It's the best section of the novel.
- Cusk features a lot of talk about mothers, their children and creativity. And always reflects on the body and pain.
- It's a challenging read. The deliberate confusion in her story-telling is characteristic. Names are occasionally dropped but their identities rarely clarified. Narrators remain nameless, and artists are just known as 'G'. Time periods are fluid. But we soon understand that these details are irrelevant. Realism is a contested terrain.
- There are four loosely connected stories, each running for about fifty pages. There is violence, abuse and the creativity that emerges from it. 'We might find ourselves washed clean of the violence of gender…to unsex the human form’. Another reflects on the physical body: ‘The ageing bourgeois couple trapped unto death in their godless and voluntary bondage is the pedestrian offspring of history’.
- The third story is by far the most interesting. It's called The Diver: a couple have dinner at an Italian restaurant in Paris with friends who work at an art museum. A man had committed suicide there that day. It was very distressing and their discussion is utterly invigorating. It's the best section of the novel.
- Cusk features a lot of talk about mothers, their children and creativity. And always reflects on the body and pain.
- I really don't think Rachel Cusk likes humans. And many readers will abandon this book. It's a hard read but well worth persevering with. It offers insight after insight, many challenging, and is written with enormous grace and style.
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