In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.įiltered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility and the mystery of change. The upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions - personal, moral, artistic, and practical - as she endeavours to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the wake of her family's collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. A stellar accomplishment.' James Lasdun, Guardian Among other things, it gets a great variety of human beings down on the page with both immediacy and depth an elemental pleasure that makes the book as gripping to read as a thriller. Outline is the first book in a short and yet epic cycle - a masterful trilogy which will be remembered as one of the most significant achievements of our times. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face great a great loss. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place.

She leads her student in storytelling exercises.

Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens.

Rachel cusk novel