検索キーワード： 著者 "Rachel Cusk" すべてのカテゴリー

En trykkende varm sommer tager forfatteren Faye til Athen for at undervise i et skrivekursus. Allerede i flyet på vej derned begynder livshistorierne at udfolde sig omkring hende, og hendes rejse bliver en rejse ind i andre menneskers fortællinger. Som en tom beholder med et lyttende øre lader hun sig udfylde af andres historier. Selvom der næsten intet røbes om Faye selv, tegner der sig gennem hendes spørgsmål og de mange samtaler et billede af en kvinde, der forsøger at komme sig over et stort tab.

Efter sin skilsmisse flytter forfatteren Faye med sine to sønner til London for at begynde på en frisk. Men opbruddet fører andre ændringer med sig - af både personlig, moralsk, kunstnerisk og ikke mindst praktisk karakter. Faye sætter sit hus i stand og taler med de mennesker hun møder i et et forsøg på at genfinde troen på livet, men vakler mellem at føle sig stærk og fuldkommen magtesløs. En elegant og reflekteret roman om menneskers livsfortællinger; om hvordan vi forsøger at styre vores liv ved at fortælle, men også om, hvordan fortællingerne forvandler os.

Forfatteren Faye er inviteret til en litteraturfestival i et sted i Europa for at promovere sin nye bog. Allerede på flyet falder hun i snak med sin sidemand, der begynder at fortælle hende om sit liv. Han fortæller om sit job, sit ægteskab og om den forfærdelige nat, han lige har tilbragt med at begrave familiens døde hund. På festivalen fortsætter Faye samtalerne med de mennesker, hun møder.

Outline is a novel in 10 conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. 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 great a great loss.

Agnes Day - subeditor, suburbanite, failure extraordinaire - has discovered disconcerting gaps in her general understanding of the world. Terminally middle class and incurably romantic, Agnes finds herself chronically confused by the most basic interactions. Life and love go on without her, but with a little façade she can pass herself off as a success. Beneath the fiction, however, the burden of truth becomes harder to bear.

Vicky is nine months pregnant and in prison. As the days slip by, she wrestles with the terrible knowledge that her baby will be taken away. Meanwhile her lawyer and his wife have moved to the country with their two children. Their arrival in the village sends ripples through a community that is to reevaluate the nature of family life, love, separation and death....

When first published in 2001, it divided female critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk's children were taken into care, that was she was unfit to look after them. Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself and the book as protests grew about its honest, gritty account of the misery of those early months. It is a seminal, stand-out book on the complications of being an ambivalent mum in an age of white-washed, Annabel Karmel'd new families.

When Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected and the surprising, all seen through Cusk's sharp and humane perspective.

Aftermath chronicles this perilous journey as the author redefines herself as a single woman and creates a new version of family life for her daughters. She discovers previously unknown strengths and freedoms but also finds herself suddenly vulnerable to outsiders, unwelcome advice, social displacement and the absence of a clear authority. The pressure to reconstruct a 'normal' life for her daughters competes with the sense that nothing feels normal at all.

When 18-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury's remote family home, he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle. Years later, when he marries the strong-willed, beautiful Rebecca, he is secretly hoping to create his own version of that free-thinking family, but after the birth of their first child, their marriage begins to flounder. The chance to escape once more to his friend's country house comes as a welcome relief, until he discovers a family changed and his own romantic notions of country life begin to disintegrate....

Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party. Her beauty ignites a blaze of excitement in his troubled heart. But Francine is ravenous for attention, driven by a thirst for conquest and when Ralph tries politely to extricate himself, he finds he is bound by chains of consequence from which it seems there is no escape.

Arlington Park is an ordinary English suburb. Over the course of a single day, the novel moves from one household to another, revealing its characters: Juliet, enraged at the victory of men over women in family life; Amanda, warding off thoughts of death with obsessive housework; Solly, about to give birth to her fourth child; Maisie, struggling to accept provincial life; and Christine, the optimist and host of a dinner party where the neighbours come together.

Thomas Bradshaw and Tonie Swann are experiencing the classic symptoms of marriage in its middle years: comfortable house, happy-enough daughter and an eerie sense that life might be happening elsewhere. Then Tonie accepts a big promotion at work and Thomas agrees to become a stay-at-home dad. While Thomas is suddenly faced with the daily silence of an empty house, Tonie finds herself alive to previously unimagined possibilities. And at the head of the family, the ageing Bradshaw parents continue their marital dynamic of bickering and petty undermining.

After the publication of Outline, Transit and Kudos - in which Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction - this writer of uncommon brilliance returns with a series of essays that offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her life's work. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, this collection is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and rewarding to behold.

Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success. In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas. At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries.

The new novel from one of the most distinctive writers of the age, Parade sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot, to tell a true story-about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves.