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jessicaxmaria 's review for:
Outline
by Rachel Cusk
Just thoughts.
It was interesting to read OUTLINE while also reading Alexander Chee's HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL. There was a span of books I read that felt like they talked to each other, since I read THE FRIEND soon after. When I learned Susan Choi had gone to a Houston-area performing arts school while reading TRUST EXERCISE. EDINBURGH, of course. Even this morning on the train, reading LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE, Valeria Luiselli, her protagonist (herself?) overhearing a patron in a book store mentioning that a certain book may have been "about the impossibility of fiction in the age of non-fiction."
In OUTLINE, Cusk's main character, Faye, tells her story in ten conversations with other people in which she does little of the talking. The reader gets glances of Faye, an outline of the space she occupies. She tells her story through others, and I loved this structure as it felt like commentary. We don't exist alone, we exist because others see us (literally and metaphorically—I exist as someone whose words you are reading). And these characters Faye (& we) are listening to in OUTLINE, they are telling Faye aspects of their own stories. It may be auto-fiction or meta or just a story. I’m okay not categorizing it.
I know it felt philosophical and poignant, and made me think of the people I have conversations with. I snapped a photo of a paragraph I’d marked and sent it to my best friend without comment. She responded asking what the book was, and that that paragraph could've saved her years of therapy. Hyperbolic words, we knew, but a shorthand in our friend language. I understood how she would respond, as she is someone I know very well. She is part of my story, and no autobiographical novel of my life would be complete without her, or the meaning of our connection.
I’m eager to read the rest of the trilogy and hope to very soon. Cusk entranced me and I wonder where the next two books take Faye. I have a feeling there are an infinite amount of angles on this book as there would be on the telling of your own life story.
It was interesting to read OUTLINE while also reading Alexander Chee's HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL. There was a span of books I read that felt like they talked to each other, since I read THE FRIEND soon after. When I learned Susan Choi had gone to a Houston-area performing arts school while reading TRUST EXERCISE. EDINBURGH, of course. Even this morning on the train, reading LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE, Valeria Luiselli, her protagonist (herself?) overhearing a patron in a book store mentioning that a certain book may have been "about the impossibility of fiction in the age of non-fiction."
In OUTLINE, Cusk's main character, Faye, tells her story in ten conversations with other people in which she does little of the talking. The reader gets glances of Faye, an outline of the space she occupies. She tells her story through others, and I loved this structure as it felt like commentary. We don't exist alone, we exist because others see us (literally and metaphorically—I exist as someone whose words you are reading). And these characters Faye (& we) are listening to in OUTLINE, they are telling Faye aspects of their own stories. It may be auto-fiction or meta or just a story. I’m okay not categorizing it.
I know it felt philosophical and poignant, and made me think of the people I have conversations with. I snapped a photo of a paragraph I’d marked and sent it to my best friend without comment. She responded asking what the book was, and that that paragraph could've saved her years of therapy. Hyperbolic words, we knew, but a shorthand in our friend language. I understood how she would respond, as she is someone I know very well. She is part of my story, and no autobiographical novel of my life would be complete without her, or the meaning of our connection.
I’m eager to read the rest of the trilogy and hope to very soon. Cusk entranced me and I wonder where the next two books take Faye. I have a feeling there are an infinite amount of angles on this book as there would be on the telling of your own life story.