Rachel Cusk

Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Roberta Garrett, Liam Harrison, Roberta Garrett,Liam Harrison

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781350370999
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Rachel Cusk is one of the most critically acclaimed and controversial contemporary British authors. Her diverse body of work offers a striking portrait of trends in 21st-century literature, and the history of Cusk's literary output is one of experimentation and a desire to push against established cultural models. Rachel Cusk: Contemporary Critical Perspectives is the first critical guide to Cusk's work, spanning novels including Saving Agnes, A Country Life, and Second Place, her 'autofictional' Outline trilogy, and her nonfiction A Life's Work, The Last Supper, Aftermath and the Coventry essays. Rigorous and wide-ranging, this book provides an accessible and lucid introduction to Cusk's work, exploring themes of gender relations, class dynamics, maternal identity and creative freedom. The collection concludes with an in-depth interview with Cusk, conducted by Merve Emre, reflecting on her influences, writing and experiences. Mapping the formal and stylistic shift across her career and locating them within their specific contexts, this collection provides a crucial analysis of Cusk's influences, politics, and literary techniques that speak to many of the most pressing issues in contemporary literature.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Contemporary Critical Perspectives
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Life Style: Rachel Cusk and the Critiqueof Minimalism
• 2 Mother Courage and Mother Shaming: Rachel Cusk’s Contribution to Maternal Feminism
• 3 Serial Metaphors: Revising and Rewriting in Rachel Cusk’s Life Narratives
• 4 Perceptions of Failure in Rachel Cusk’s Saving Agnes and Second Place
• 5 ‘Some things are artificial and some are authentic’: Rachel Cusk’s Depth Perception
• 6 Autofictional Experiments and Serial Aesthetics in Rachel Cusk’s Outline Trilogy
• 7 Being Sent to Coventry: Silence, Cruelty and Rachel Cusk’s Discrepant Style
• Afterword: Second Text: Biography, Intertextuality, and Art in Second Place
• An Interview with Rachel Cusk
• Index