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Showing 1 - 25 of
55 matches in All Departments
Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face great a great loss.
Outline is the first book in a short and yet epic cycle - a masterful trilogy which will be remembered as one of the most significant achievements of our times.
'Outline succeeds powerfully. Among other things, it gets a great variety of human beings down on the page with both immediacy and depth; an elemental pleasure that makes the book as gripping to read as a thriller... A stellar accomplishment.' James Lasdun, Guardian
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 'A classic, but with
contemporary urgency thumping through it.' Claire-Louise Bennett,
author of Pond A woman invites a famed artist to the remote coastal
landscape where she lives. Drawn to his paintings, she believes his
vision may penetrate the mystery at the centre of her life. But as
a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence soon twists
the patterns of her secluded household. 'The most singular book . .
. A psychodrama that is both timeless and up-to-the minute . . .
Truly one of a kind.' Justine Jordan, Guardian 'A novel of deep
insight and scarring honesty.' Martin Chilton, Independent 'Re-sets
the dial yet again.' Claire Harman, Evening Standard 'Extraordinary
. . . fearless.' Alex Clark, The Spectator 'Glittering brilliance.'
Jon Day, Financial Times
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Kudos (Paperback)
Rachel Cusk
1
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R318
R224
Discovery Miles 2 240
Save R94 (30%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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'A landmark in twenty-first-century English literature.' Andrew Anthony, Observer
'Kudos is one of the most astoundingly original and necessary books I've ever read. It made me laugh, think and cry . . . I envy anyone who hasn't read it yet.' Julie Myerson, Guardian
A woman on a plane listens to the stranger in the seat next to hers telling her the story of his life: his work, his marriage, and the harrowing night he has just spent burying the family dog. That woman is Faye, who is on her way to Europe to promote the book she has just published. Once she reaches her destination, the conversations she has with the people she meets - about art, about family, about politics, about love, about sorrow and joy, about justice and injustice - include the most far-reaching questions human beings ask. These conversations, the last of them on the phone with her son, rise dramatically and majestically to a beautiful conclusion.
Following the novels Outline and Transit, Kudos completes Rachel Cusk's trilogy with overwhelming power.
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Parade (Paperback)
Rachel Cusk
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R545
R363
Discovery Miles 3 630
Save R182 (33%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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A path-breaking novel of art, womanhood and violence, from the author
of the Outline trilogy.
Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down.
In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street.
A mother dies. A man falls to his death. Couples seek escape in distant
lands.
The new novel from one of the most distinctive writers of the age,
Parade sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of
identity, character, and plot, to tell a true story-about art, family,
morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves.
In the wake of her family's collapse, a writer and her two young
sons move to London. The upheaval is the catalyst for a number of
transitions- - personal, moral, artistic, and practical - as she
endeavours to construct a new reality for herself and her children.
In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she
has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability
and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to
reattach herself to, and believe in, life. Filtered through the
impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees
Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her
critically acclaimed novel Outline, and offers up a penetrating and
moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering,
the moral problems of personal responsibility and the mystery of
change. '[Transit] confirms that one of the most fascinating
projects in contemporary fiction is unfolding in Rachel Cusk's
trilogy.' Adam Foulds
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The Temporary (Paperback)
Rachel Cusk; Edited by Mitzi Angel
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R403
R334
Discovery Miles 3 340
Save R69 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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When eighteen-year-old Michael visits the Hanbury's remote family
home he is captivated by their bohemian lifestyle. Years later,
when he marries the strong-willed, beautiful Rebecca, he is
secretly hoping to create his own version of that free-thinking
family, but after the birth of their first child, their marriage
begins to flounder. The chance to escape once more to his friend's
country house comes as a welcome relief, until he discovers a
family changed, and his own romantic notions of country life begin
to disintegrate . . .
Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award Agnes Day - sub-editor,
suburbanite, failure extraordinaire - has discovered disconcerting
gaps in her general understanding of the world. Terminally
middle-class and incurably romantic, Agnes finds herself
chronically confused by the most basic interactions. Life and love
go on without her, but with a little façade she can pass herself
off as a success. Beneath the fiction, however, the burden of truth
becomes harder to bear.
A Life's Work is Rachel Cusk's funny, moving, brutally honest
account of her early experiences of motherhood. An education in
babies, books, breast-feeding, toddler groups, broken nights, bad
advice and never being alone, it is a landmark work, which has
provoked acclaim and outrage in equal measure.
'Cements her reputation as one of the most fierce and elegant
chroniclers of how we live now.' Stephanie Merritt, Observer
Coventry is a collection of essays about choices, womanhood and
art. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with
pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence,
Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, it is essential reading for
our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and
rewarding to behold.
When Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her
husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and
wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the
expected and the surprising, all seen through Cusk's sharp and
humane perspective.
In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk's marriage of ten years came to
an end. Candid and revelatory, Aftermath chronicles the perilous
journey as the author redefines herself and creates a new version
of family life for her daughters.
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Outline (Paperback)
Rachel Cusk
1
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R438
R335
Discovery Miles 3 350
Save R103 (24%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Thomas Bradshaw and Tonie Swann are experiencing the classic
symptoms of marriage in its middle years: comfortable house,
happy-enough daughter and an eerie sense that life might be
happening elsewhere. Then Tonie accepts a big promotion at work and
Thomas agrees to become a stay-at-home dad. While Thomas is
suddenly faced with the daily silence of an empty house, Tonie
finds herself alive to previously unimagined possibilities. And at
the head of the family, the ageing Bradshaw parents continue their
marital dynamic of bickering and petty undermining.
Ralph Loman works in an unsatisfying job, for a free London
newspaper, when Francine Snaith, a temporary secretary for a
corporate finance firm, unexpectedly crosses his path at a party.
Her beauty ignites a blaze of excitement in his troubled heart. But
Francine is ravenous for attention, driven by a thirst for
conquest, and when Ralph tries politely to extricate himself, he
finds he is bound by chains of consequence from which it seems
there is no escape. The Temporary paints a merciless portrait of
the cut and thrust of modern romance, work and life.
________________________ A JOYFUL 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF A
COMING-OF-AGE CLASSIC ________________________ 'There are few
modern tales of first love and its disillusions that are as
thoroughly realised, as brilliantly lewd, and as hilariously
satisfying to men and women of all ages as this one' - Rachel Cusk
Eighteen-year-old Katherine - bright, stylish, frustratedly
suburban - doesn't know how her life will change when the brilliant
Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she
enters the Goldmans' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the
beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are
everything she has been waiting for. But when a romantic
entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the
family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after
more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful
surprises... ________________________ 'The perfect book' - Meg
Mason 'The best possible company in this difficult world' - Ann
Patchett 'A daisy bomb of joy' - Maria Semple 'Funny, charming,
teeming with life, and real' - Nick Hornby 'I adored it ...
Redolent of classics like The Constant Nymph with both its true
voice and wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine' - Sophie Dahl 'One
of those books that when people have read it, they just push it
into your hands silently: "You have to read this book, you will
love this book." There's no other book I love more' - Caroline
O'Donoghue, Sentimental Garbage 'Reading it again is as comforting
as eating toast and Marmite between clean, fresh sheets' - Rachel
Cooke, Sunday Times 'Think Brideshead Revisited set in the 1970s,
only sexier and much funnier. It kills me that I didn't read it at
university, when I really needed it' - Meg Rosoff, New Statesman
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