...it’s like looking at old photographs of yourself. There comes a point at which the record needs to be updated, because you’ve shed too many links with what you were.”
Outline by, Rachel Cusk is really surprising me - I’m about 80 pages in and it’s constantly in my thoughts. I admit that I’m always a bit weary of poplar, contemporary releases. In today’s world of generic, overhyped reviews because people don’t want to be too critical, I’m skeptical.
However, Outline is a pleasant surprise. I like Cusk’s dry, bare writing style. Even though there is a lot of passive voice in the narrative, because the writing is a bit sparse, it works because the passive voice isn’t being weighed down by overly flowery language.
I really like how the unnamed narrator is slowly revealing her own story through the conversations she has with those around her. This is a story of a woman trying to make sense of her former life and the uncertain life that is now unfolding around her. What happens when the people and places in our lives shift and change? How is one’s identity tied up in these people and places in which one thought would be permanent? When those things change, there is a dissonance between the internal and the external and a tension between remaining in the past and moving towards an unknown future.
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