Rachel Cusk, Second Place.

 

- As a great fan of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy I was really looking forward to reading this just published novel.

- Unfortunately I was profoundly disappointed. This effort is tedious and uninspiring. 

- The unidentified 'M' is telling the story of her life and feelings to 'Jeffers', a completely unidentified person or entity.

- She was moved by the paintings of 'L' that she saw at an exhibition in Paris. There are other characters in her story - her husband Tony, her daughter Justine and her boyfriend Kurt, L's companion Brett, and a few others. These are at least named. 

- M reflects on men and their masculine ways throughout. As a woman she feels constrained, almost imprisoned. This is true to Cusk's oeuvre generally. 

- At first she seems wise and insightful, indulging in psychological and philosophical meanderings. But they’re also quite frequently banal. She's completely lacking in self confidence, and is defining herself as profoundly insignificant. Some musings are simply incomprehensible. As a reader it was hard not to scream at her: 'lighten up for god's sake'!

- Her husband Tony is ‘practical’ and as boring as batshit. His car, really an old and decaying truck, is ridiculous. He has never bought any clothes. M is also limited clothes wise. She wears shapeless coverings and restricts the colours to black or white. Neither of them them ever cut their hair. She's indulging in ‘a kind of renunciation of sexuality and beauty’. 

- When L and Brett are invited to stay with them on their rural isolated property, sharp and disruptive contrasts emerge. L and Brett are bright and stylish, and Brett, a young woman, is beautiful, creative and full of life. Obviously she’s quite challenging to M. She and L exhibit a wild, almost pagan passion.

- The novel pivots three quarters of the way through and gave me hope that it would finally come alive. M awakens and seems to be on the way to liberation. She's been desperate for L to recognise her and paint a portrait of her, and he finally does. However it turns out to be a wild, demonic wall mural of the Garden of Eden, with M rendered as the ‘bitch’ Eve. 

- She's profoundly shocked and she quickly reverts to type, the submissive female. A more comfortable place for her. She can't handle the sense of unreality and independence she's made to feel. The novel ends with M and Tony indulging in the wilful act of whitewashing over the mural. Utterly shameful. 

- This is not a pleasant or satisfying read. But I'm left with the thought that perhaps I've missed the whole point of the novel. 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.

(Cusk includes this note in a postscript:

Second Place owes a debt to Lorenzo in Taos, Mabel Dodge Luhan's 1932 memoir of the time D. H. Lawrence came to stay with her in Taos, New Mexico. My version - in which the Lawrence figure is a painter, not a writer - in intended as a tribute to her spirit.

The blurb to Mabel's actual memoir clarifies where the names came from at least: 'M' is Mabel; 'L' is Lawrence; 'Jeffers' is Robinson Jeffers, a celebrated poet at the time; 'Brett' is Dorothy Brett, a friend)