Outline: A Novel (Outline Trilogy Book 1)

While I was drawn by the premise of this book and by the narrator's ability to listen to people explaining who they are to her (which people seem to have a need to do), I was ultimately disappointed by it. As I see it, the main problem with the book is that absolutely nobody in the world talks the way 99% percent of the characters in the book talk. The more serious problem is that all of the characters here talk in exactly the same way, to the point that there is little differentiation between one and the next. I began to feel I was just listening to the author ruminating--not to say preaching-- through these cardboard masks she had created. Half way through the book I found myself skimming, which for me means I've grown unable to suspend my disbelief long enough to feel engaged by the narrative. I did finish the book but can't say I'd recommend it.

What happens when a novelist travels from Britain to Greece to teach a week-long summer course on writing? Not a whole hell of a lot, yet this is the breadth of Rachel Cusk's Outline, the first part of a prospective trilogy of introspective novels. Fear not, there is a quite a lot packed in these pages. The narrator, Faye, is a very good listener and we are treated to all she takes in: from her neighbor, an older gentleman, on the plane; from fellow workers, friends, students in her class. All have interesting stories to tell. A chorus of sorts.As far as the narrator's own story goes we only superficially learn that something has befallen her (divorce?, horrible accident?). Her children are mentioned, a husband, but it's all clouded in so much London fog. Not until we begin to see Faye's experience revealed through other peoples stories - perspectives - and her reactions to them does the reader get the sense that Faye is lost; not so much holding back as not knowing how to portray herself any longer.One night, she dines out with a colleague and one of his clients, a newly successful novelist named Angeliki. Faye soon gets an earful on the subject of women's identities in the family structure: "‘For many women,’she said, ‘having a child is their central experience of creativity, and yet the child will never remain a created object; unless,’ she said, ‘the mother’s sacrifice of herself is absolute, which mine never could have been, and which no woman’s ought to be these days. My own mother lived through me in a way that was completely uncritical,’ she said, ‘and the consequence was that I came into adulthood unprepared for life, because nobody saw me as important in the way she did, which was the way I was used to being seen. And then you meet a man who thinks you’re important enough to marry you, so it seems right that you should say yes. But it is when you have a baby that the feeling of importance really returns,’ she said, with growing passion, ‘except that one day you realise that all this –the house, the husband, the child –isn’t importance after all, in fact it is the exact opposite: you have become a slave, obliterated!'" We start to get the idea, a hint, of the shape of Faye's life as she tentatively befriends the older gentleman, her neighbor on the plane trip over. He invites her out for an excursion on his small motor boat (downsized from a yacht, post divorce). While swimming she spies a family on another nearby vessel; children diving into the water, the mother in a sunhat reading a book, the husband pacing on the deck speaking into his cell. Faye reflects: "I was beginning to see my own fears and desires manifested outside myself, was beginning to see in other people’s lives a commentary on my own. When I looked at the family on the boat, I saw a vision of what I no longer had: I saw something, in other words, that wasn’t there. Those people were living in their moment, and though I could see it I could no more return to that moment than I could walk across the water that separated us. And of those two ways of living – living in the moment and living outside it – which was the more real?"Though part of a cycle, Cusk does not leave Outline open-ended, rather she pulls it together, closes gaps and circles back. Faye meets the woman who will replace her at the summer school and will be staying in the same time-shared apartment: Anne. Anne relates an incident of her own, and in so doing reveals an experience similar to Faye's in which she strikes up a conversation with her neighbor, a diplomat stationed in Athens, on the flight to Greece: "He was describing, she realised, a distinction that seemed to grow clearer and clearer the more he talked, a distinction he stood on one side of while she, it became increasingly apparent, stood on the other. He was describing, in other words, what she herself was not: in everything he said about himself, she found in her own nature a corresponding negative. This anti-description, for want of a better way of putting it, had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition: while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline , with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her for the first time since the incident a sense of who she now was."Thus the author forces Faye to blatantly confront her own malaise, that which can only be revealed through other's stories, borne vicariously through other's lives; mirrored by how other's see the world, leaving an outline to be completed.

The title is perhaps misleading, or at least has 2 meanings, the Outline of a Novel or the Outline of Ourselves (that we compose by our conversations with others). There is also a 3rd theme in this book: what is the truth, our interpretation or a concrete set of facts?Great read, many, many insights.

The most interesting novelist since Richard PowersOn the one hand the thesis of this novel is that we are all novelists struggling to name the meaning of our lives, and doing so through our interactions with others and with other objects. On the other hand, the deck is stacked against us, as it were, because others almost never recognise us as we recognise ourselves and our recognitions are always changing. The outline that is the governing metaphor of the book is the best we can hope for the intelligibility of our selves, but even here the outline resists both the security of embodiment and the stasis of knowledge, even as it is shaped by desire and fantasy, without which even it threatens to dissipate.

The reviews and comments I've seen have in various ways missed the point of the book, identified in its title. On page 239 of this 249-page novel, she notes that when people describe themselves (the book consists almost entirely of these), they are describing what the listener is not. "This anti-description...had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition: while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her for the first time since the incident a sense of who she now was." The book consists in ten conversations with people about themselves, interrogated by the Narrator who is seeking her own identity, which they succeed in outlining.This is a brilliantly conceived and executed book—beautifully written, capturing so many insightful details of human life that speak for themselves as she describes them. I read it at almost one sitting, and now intend to read it again, not because I'm afraid I missed anything, but simply to savor it all.

Truly dreadful, dull and boring. Having read the recent praise heaped on the third book of Cusk’s trilogy, like another reviewer I too bought this as I wanted to start from the first.I read it on holiday and hated it. I persisted but it really put me in a bad mood. I found myself getting wound up by minor things like Cusk’s repeated use of the word ‘bitterer’ instead of ‘more bitter’ for example, and she also seems to think Ireland is part of the British Isles, which wound me up further. The characters have little to redeem them, there is no plot and it comes across as quite vain and narcissistic.I really wanted to like this, given the number of recommendations in the papers and on Twitter, but I can only assume that the author’s friends have written them.

Outline is a novel written in the first person major who is consciously telling the story. The initially nameless, female writer, flies out to Athens for a week to teach a writing summer school class. The novel is set in the modern day. We come to learn that the narrator is a recently divorced mother. The narrators experience during the teaching week is the frame story, around which we get to know the other characters life stories, with a philosophical point of view The first two male characters are nameless. The first she refers to as the ‘billionaire’ the second who features predominately, is referred to as the ‘neighbough’. The billionaire has lunch with the narrator and completely outlines his life story — not leaving time to discuss the literary magazine he was thinking of starting up. The ‘neighbough,' who she initially sits next to on the aeroplane, tells the narrator his complete life story from his schooling to his failed marriages. He then later goes on to make a clumsy pass at her aboard his boat during the second of their two rendezvous. The first named character is Ryan, another writer who is teaching alongside her at the summer school. Ryan comes across as an unlikeable character. Cusk achieves this by describing how he chooses to walk on the inside of the pavement, whilst explaining he doesn't want to be a road casualty statistic — leaving the narrator to walk on the busy roadside. He also shares his life story whilst leering at a young waitress, then justify’s himself by announcing ‘my wife eyeballs the fellas.’ Cusk (2015,p.45) Ryan later finds the narrators friend Elena attractive, but quickly makes his excuses to leave when he hears they are meeting Melete a pre-eminent lesbian poet. The next character to open up to the narrator is divorced Paniotis. An old writer friend quickly followed by Angeliki, a successful author. Angeliki sees herself as a spokesperson for suffering womanhood, but ironically claims she is afraid when traveling to new and familiar cities without her husband. Both discuss distancing relations with their children. The narrators own children only contact her fleetingly when they want something. Cusk writes about a few of the students at the summer school who vary in personality and neuroses. Cusk demonstrates that the narrator is a judgemental and unfriendly character when she writes ‘it was this eccentricity that had made me answer him’ Cusk (2015,p.6) implying that if the ‘neighbough’ wasn't eccentric she would have refused to answer him. The narrator is a contrarian and doesn't hold back voicing her thoughts on other peoples lives. She is sharp and intelligent and judges conversation as though she is critiquing a book. ‘I remained dissatisfied by the story…lacked objectivity…relied too heavily on extremes…the moral properties it ascribed to those extremes were often incorrect.’ Cusk (2015,p.29) This demonstrates the narrator takes things literally when listening to dialogue and constantly looks for flaws and consequently finds them. The narrator is a woman of few spoken words and appears to have a mystical presence that when people meet her they openly share their life story. Allowing the narrator to judge their stories for preciseness and bias. Throughout Outline there is a strong theme of failed relationships. Cusk, an author and divorcee wrote Aftermath (2012) a controversial book detailing her own separation and divorce which received much criticism. Previously Cusk wrote A life's work (2001) a frank and honest book about her becoming a mother. Outline seems to be somewhat of an amalgamation of these concepts, maybe hinting at an autobiographical element. Cusk certainly seems to have written what she knows and the reflective and argumentative side of the narrator is of no surprise when armed with this knowledge. As a writer I find Cusk has bravely laid out her soul in her books and I am surprised that this has not left her feeling exposed or vulnerable. I hesitate as to whether I could dare to do the same. Sharing a short poem of brutal-inner honesty, is just about cringingly manageable. Someone reading an entire novel of me philosophically musing about my relationships, and their total and utter failure is like being stood nailed, and naked on a brightly lit church pulpit. Could I?

There were good reviews of the third volume of this trilogy so I wanted to read it, but to start with the first book of the trilogy. I really disliked it, and almost stopped reading it ( which I almost never do however much I dislike a book). I often read for the plot, which this book doesn't have, nor any notable characters. A series of descriptions of people you know nothing about, and care less didn't do it for me. But I did finish it, and even started on the second book, which I did stop reading in the middle. I do not understand all the hype !

An extraordinary piece of writing which conjures up new possibilities for the novel. If you're looking for plot and rounded characters in Victorian fashion, best step away now - this is a book which engages with postmodern concerns about the amorphousness of identity and writing-as-living.The narrator only gradually comes into being as the stories other tell bounce off her, creating the 'outline' of the title. Flawless writing, hypnotic reading.

I bought this on the strength of a review of the recently-published third novel in this trilogy, remembering that I have four others of hers and, while rarely tempted to re-read, did enjoy them.Reading this suggested that one of the reasons why was that I found her characters less than believable insofar as their conversations, their willingness to discuss their lives and their mistakes, so very articulately, never rang true. Throughout the book I was aware of reading a novel - a very well-observed and beautifully-written novel - written by someone who revels in doing so, but whose failure to create believable scenarios forever felt like an exercise in doing so, rather than creating a world her characters inhabited.