Outline by Rachel Cusk

Outline (Outline Trilogy, #1)

by Rachel Cusk

"Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinners and discourse. She goes swimming with an elderly Greek bachelor. The people she encounters speak, volubly, about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss. Outline is Cusk's finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years"--

Reviewed by Joséphine on

3 of 5 stars

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Actual rating: 3.5 stars

Initial thoughts: This book served to portray a collection of observations and ideas more than anything else. Plot and characters were secondary, if not, tertiary considerations. In a way, Outline deconstructed the format of a novel in the pursuit of gathering stories that are worthy of being written. It's a book that requires engagement of the mind and cares little for the heart's response.

While I did enjoy it on an intellectual level, I thought that Outline offered too little and yet was overambitious. In presenting all these snippets from various characters' lives, I felt like I didn't get to know any of them, least of all the main character. I'd probably enjoy it more upon a reread, next time in print rather than as an audiobook, with a pen in hand to annotate intriguing insights on life.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 7 March, 2017: Finished reading
  • 7 March, 2017: Reviewed