To a large extent she suffers from existing as a female writer telling hard truths. This is well worth the read.Ĭusk isn’t for everyone the criticism levelled against her come from the strong emotions that she originates in her readers. “Why had I destroyed my home?” She asks at one point. In the dentist, in her solicitor’s office, Cusk coolly examines the remains of disaster. Her treatment of the legalities of her divorce is sparse (perhaps a careful effort to avoid privacy breaches), but the day-to-day experience of the aftermath of her marriage is oddly harrowing for the observing reader. Essentially, she insists that she owes her reader nothing - which is refreshingly honest, as Cusk often is. She prefaces the story with an assessment that it is hers, not ours - and that she is not demanding that we approve or disapprove. The criticism levelled at her memoir work could also have been applied to Aftermath, which considers Cusk’s divorce. She referenced the disintegration of herself in the pursuit of looking after a small baby (while pregnant with a second) - and some of the audience for the book accused her of hating her child. When she wrote A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother in 2001, she left the rose tinted glasses firmly on the shelf, detailing the difficulties of pregnancy and the rigmarole of antenatal classes, parenting books, breastfeeding and sleepless nights. Her family was both Catholic and wealthy Cusk was educated at a convent in Cambridge and then attended Oxford to study English.Ĭusk is not without her detractors. Cusk tackles subjects like marriage, divorce, and motherhood from her own point of view in autobiographical formats, while her broader work considers love, marriage, intimacy, and what makes a home.Ĭusk was born in Canada to British parents and spent her early childhood in Los Angeles before moving to the United Kingdom when she was about 7. Cusk is a master of social satire and has poured effort into pushing the boundaries of her own ideas, producing brilliant autofiction along the way. With Rachel Cusk’s Second Place earning a place on the Booker longlist in July, it seems like a good time to look the Rachel Cusk’s other works, which span fiction and nonfiction, exploring themes of femininity and the place of women.

Outline trilogy rachel cusk