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Sign up todayCoventry
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Learn moreFrom Rachel Cusk, her first collection of essays about motherhood, marriage, feminism, and art
Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions.
Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential listening for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.
Rachel Cusk is the author of Second Place; the trilogy Outline, Transit, Kudos; the essay collection Coventry; the memoirs A Life’s Work, The Last Supper, and Aftermath; and several other novels: Saving Agnes (winner of the Whitbread Award), The Temporary, The Country Life (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), The Lucky Ones, In the Fold, Arlington Park, and The Bradshaw Variations.
Antonia Beamish is a voice-over artist and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. She is also a professional actress best known for performances in films such as The Last Horror Movie, Dead Creatures, and Chemical Wedding.
Reviews
“The British novelist shares her voice on everything from motherhood and marriage to art in these pieces, which jump between memoir, criticism, and writing about writing.”
“The essays…[are] first-rate, marked by candor and seriousness, and they’re familiar…[with] Cusk’s abiding themes—her obligations as mother, daughter, citizen, artist, and breadwinner.”
“In Coventry, the British author of the widely admired Outline trilogy shows how central the self is to her artistic vision.”
“In Coventry…Cusk explains that her parents periodically withdraw contact without explanation. When her mother reaches out to reconnect after one such absence, Cusk decides not to re-engage, preferring to take up permanent residence in Coventry. It is from this place of exile that she observes the workings of the world.”
“Cusk’s first collection of essays is a daring return to her own voice….It delves piercingly into familiar realms of motherhood, divorce, art, feminism, and family.”
“An eloquent and engrossing selection of nonfiction writing that will enhance Cusk’s stature in contemporary literature.”
“Opening up the deep crevices of everyday life’s paradoxes, myths, and more, Cusk pulls apart the stories we tell to reflect on the mess underneath.”
“The overriding thread binding her essays is…allowing people to make sense of their lives. It’s something Cusk interrogates exceptionally well throughout this well-crafted compilation.”
“Sassy, honest, and memorable. Readers will come away with numerous ‘aha’ moments.”
“Impressive and wonderful. Rachel Cusk sees the truth where the rest of us can only make out shadows. Coventry is Cusk’s theory of forms.”
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