I thought this was a phenomenal book and one that has left a lasting and important impression on me. Of course, I'll need to revisit. There are just too many delicate phrases, too many layers of metaphor. I found myself wanting to jot down lines every few paragraphs. This is a novel which left me feeling, ironically, solicitous about its array of characters. Each one is almost not okay, but probably fine, in a way that gave me a persistent touch of anxiety.
There is an icy tone in the narration but I don't think this sort "pictures at an exhibition" type of work would be more effective any other way. You need that cold distance to feel the discomfort that comes with seeing a person's psyche so clinically splayed.
I did not like it but also really liked it and it was amazing, all at once, but we'll give it 4 stars because its amazingness was amazingly flawed. I used to think that a writer needed two things: something to say and the ability to say it. A novelist friend said that they didn't need something to say, or maybe what he said was that now they no longer needed something to say though in the past they did. Ms. Cusk both has something to say and the ability to say it but seems to be missing something else. There's a third thing necessary and I don't know what to call it exactly. In some way, this book is about that absence. It's as if the purpose of this book is to point to that absence in both her narrator and her other characters and perhaps in us all. …
I did not like it but also really liked it and it was amazing, all at once, but we'll give it 4 stars because its amazingness was amazingly flawed. I used to think that a writer needed two things: something to say and the ability to say it. A novelist friend said that they didn't need something to say, or maybe what he said was that now they no longer needed something to say though in the past they did. Ms. Cusk both has something to say and the ability to say it but seems to be missing something else. There's a third thing necessary and I don't know what to call it exactly. In some way, this book is about that absence. It's as if the purpose of this book is to point to that absence in both her narrator and her other characters and perhaps in us all.
People say nothing happens or it has no plot but actually all sorts of things happen and it does have a plot, though that plot seems to be besides the point. The book consists mainly of conversations, mostly about failed relationships. The formerly married narrator, who we learn is named Faye when she is refused an increase to a loan (that being one of things that happens and which upsets her), tells us and her "neighbor" (the man whom she sits next to on a plane) that she is no longer interested in having a relationship other than one of friendship. This is but one aspect of Faye's having become unstuck from the normal structures that hold people and the world together. It's the unstuckness of a writer who is then free to observe from a unique point of view. She sees people caught up in the moment and realizes that she is outside that moment. This is part of what it means to be a tourist (she is visiting Athens) but it is also something more. By which I mean, something less.
She isn't suffering from it, because that would be too involved and though she has feelings about what is happening and opinions about those with whom she speaks, it is only the refusal of the loan which provokes a response from her, and that response is to walk out into the Athens street as if she could share this in some way but does not know how. It remain her private experience, yet writing is a form of sharing, isn't it? She is teaching a writing class, sharing what she knows of how to write--how to share. It is a paradox.
Her teaching replacement (when her term is over) named Anne tells her about an incident, but first makes it clear that the incident should not be taken for the cause of what followed. This incident was a unique moment and she has been compelled to speak of it until she finally made an effort to refrain from doing so. Anne also is under what I want to call a bewitchment in which the fact that there are words for things means nothing more need be said. She was writing about jealousy and discovered that the word "jealousy" said it all and thus she had no need to write about it. And because the phrase "Anne's life" summed up her daily existence she no longer felt a need to continue to live it, other than there was no other choice. What Anne missed seeing is that her "incident" would not leave her, despite her many retellings of it. It remained outside her bewitchment despite her refusal to grant it significance and her vow to stop talking about it.
And that is what is missing from the bewitchment of this book. The book lacks an incident and it does so intentionally. The many things that happen in the book might have been incidents but they are not. The closest thing to one is Faye's refusal for the loan. We readers don't know what this means to her, only that it does mean something when so much else does not. The woman who tells her trivializes it and says "I hope it doesn't spoil your holiday." And this is the conversation in which Faye gets to have a name for the first time. It is, in that sense, a defining moment, and yet it of no consequence to anything or anyone else in the book.
And so this intentional lack annoyed me as a reader, even as it amazed me. And the care and depth with which it was written amazed me as well. Is it called "outline" because we never can get in? I plan to read the two other books of this trilogy but I'm in no hurry to do so.
It’s important for the reader to understand, going in, that this is not a novel. It’s a series of character sketches in which the characters relate stories about what made them into the people they are. It’s beautifully and lyrically written, and I enjoyed it as someone who appreciates that sort of writing, but it’s definitely not for everyone.
