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Second Place

A Novel

by Rachel Cusk

Narrator Kate Fleetwood

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Length 6 hours 18 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“A great book from one of the most perceptive authors working. The book mostly focuses on what happens when a celebrated artist comes to stay at the narrator's home. There are plenty of striking ruminations on the nature of love and relationships, but what stuck with me was when the novel commented on art and the relationships artists have with those around them. Also, the book is full of great lines to savor. It seems Rachel Cusk has carved a lane for herself in the current literary landscape and I'm excited to see what she does next.”
— James • Malaprop's Bookstore

Bookseller recommendation

“Hallucinatory and abstract, Second Place revolves around a female narrator and an artist she invites to stay on her property. The novel becomes a descent into the narrator's psyche as well as an introspective look on art, gender, the complexities of human relationships, and identity. Rachel Cusk is a master at dissecting her characters, unveiling their darkest qualities, while still maintaining a nature of enigmatic unpredictability. ”
— Chloe • Vroman's Bookstore

Summary
About the author

A haunting fable of art, family, and fate from the author of the Outline trilogy.

A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in the remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the center of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma—and disrupts the calm of her secluded household.

Second Place, Rachel Cusk’s electrifying new novel, is a study of female fate and male privilege, the geometries of human relationships, and the moral questions that animate our lives. It reminds us of art’s capacity to uplift—and to destroy.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Fiction Fiction - Literary

Rachel Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and spent much of her childhood in Los Angeles before finishing her education at St Mary's Convent, Cambridge. She read English at New College, Oxford, and has travelled extensively in Spain and Central America. She is the author of six novels. The first, Saving Agnes (1993), won the Whitbread First Novel Award. A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001) is a personal exploration of motherhood. In The Lucky Ones (2003) she uses a series of five narratives, loosely linked by the experience of parenthood, to write of life's transformations, of what separates us from those we love and what binds us to those we no longer understand. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. Her latest novel is Outline (2014).