A man’s romantic notions of country life disintegrate as he discerns the deceptions at the heart the illusion, in Rachel Cusk’s journey of discovery.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Can art both save and destroy us? Rachel Cusk offers a deep affirmation of the human soul, while grappling with its darkest demons.
A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally between our internal and external worlds.
Rachel Cusk
About the Author
Rachel Cusk is a Canadian novelist and writer. Her 2005 novel In the Fold was longlisted for the Booker Prize.I felt better able to express my ideas about femininity and perception as ideas about painting
Rachel Cusk and Makenna Goodman in conversation
Rachel Cusk and author Makenna Goodman appeared in conversation for the Washington D.C. bookshop Politics and Prose.
‘The big project for me with Second Place was thinking about location, something needing to have a location… and that’s a question about painting versus writing, and something I’ve been increasingly interested in is the location in itself of a visual work, and how almost location-less a written work is, and I guess that also in my head connected with femininity as a location or as something that is lacking a location,’ said Cusk.
Watch the conversation in full below.
Rachel Cusk, 2014.
© Ulf Andersen/Getty Images
Second Place is introspective and amusing, an impeccable work of art
Other nominated books by Rachel Cusk
