On one level an absorbing series of confessional tales, it is also a deft, multi-layered commentary on the nature of narrative and the effects of a listener's bias and filter. Outline explores both the way people present themselves and the act of storytelling. It turns out that Faye was as clueless as he about her imminent breakup. "You seemed so happy with your family, so complete, it was an image of how things ought to be," he says. Most of the stories involve disappointments and divorces: An old friend in publishing confesses that he felt himself an utter failure when he snapped her picture with her husband and two sons, pre-divorce, at their last meeting, three years earlier. In ten closely observed chapters, Faye relays the surprisingly confiding - and engrossing - stories people tell her about their lives during her short Greek odyssey. Its storyline, such as it is, spans a few days in the life of its narrator, a divorced English writer named Faye who flies to Athens for a short stint teaching a summer school course she's one of a revolving group of visiting writers. Outline, her eighth novel, moves further still from plot-driven narrative. Her preferred form is episodic, capturing the trials and tradeoffs of interdependency in a series of penetrating snapshots. In her controversially bitter memoirs, including A Life's Work and Aftermath, and in piercing - but always beautifully written - novels like The Lucky Ones, Cusk has examined the difficulties of self-definition in the context of marriage, motherhood and family.
Rachel Cusk is better known in England than in America her sharply satirical books about the tolls of family life play better across the Atlantic than here in our often puritanical culture, with its bias towards domesticity. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Outline Author Rachel Cusk
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