Outline: A Novel

By Rachel Cusk

A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.

One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year. Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail

A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language

A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives.

Rachel Cusk's Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. 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 a great loss.

Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people's motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk's finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9780374712365

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk is the author of Second Place, the Outline trilogy, the memoirs A Life’s Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Paris.

Reviews for Outline

[kayanelson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read the 2nd book in this trilogy first. I like this one, Outline, more. How does an author conceive of such a book? There's no real plot, just a week of teaching writing in Greece, and the main character rarely speaks or gives her thoughts. She's a very good listener. So the structure of the story is different but then all of the topics that the other people discuss are so interesting, different and diverse. In Transit (the 2nd book), I felt like there was more I wanted to know. In this book, for whatever reason, I felt satisfied. Kudos, the final book in the trilogy is up next and I can't wait.

[chrisblocker · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked up Outline because and only because I've heard Cusk's name being dropped as a potential Man Booker Prize contender this year. If she is nominated, it will be for her newest novel, Kudos; but as her newest is the third in a trilogy, I did not want to find myself already two books behind when the longlist drops. So I thought I'd get a head start... just in case.Man Booker Prize nominated books can come in many varieties, but it's not uncommon for the list to have several titles that are intelligent and/or relatively dry. The latter can be difficult for some, but more often than not, I enjoy them despite being slow. I cannot speak for Kudos as I have yet to read it, but man, oh man isOutline boring. I can see why some might think Cusk would be a welcome nominee. If Kudos were nominated, I'd read it, as I didn't dislike Outline or the style Cusk used to bring her story together—it was just abysmally dry.Outline is the story of stories. It's about an author interacting with people in Athens, and telling their stories. But her stories are more like an outline of these characters. There's not much to them. They're not the most interesting stories, but I'm sure they're some kind of a reflection of the author herself. Who am I kidding? This book was so uneventful. There's beauty of words and a certain strong realism to the dialogue, but it lacks plot and character. Still, some people love it. LOVE IT. And I say kudos to them. Personally, I think I missed something, but I'd be willing to give it another go.

[carolfoisset · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cusk is a master at description and can write about a person in such a way that you feel you have become acquaintances and want to know more about them!

[c.archer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting writing. I liked it, but didn't love it. Probably best for people who are introverts since it focuses mostly on several two way conversations with the narrator and one other person. Much is her listening to the opining and ramblings of the other individual, so the reader doesn't get much of a sense about her. Since she doesn't seem to have a true sense of herself, that seems fitting. The setting is Greece, but it has little to do with the actual story other than give an interesting backdrop.

[iambookish-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 This sure is a tough one to rate. While I admire the linguistic skills the author possesses, I can't say I enjoyed the book all that much. I would certainly consider this "literature", and as is so much the case I tend to find this book designation lacking in narrative interest. I can understand it's inclusion in the shortlist, but my bet isn't on this one for the win.

[lynsey2-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Outline is a collection of stories, centered around a narrator who is traveling to Greece to teach a writing class. It should be read as such and not as a traditional novel. If I read too much of the book in one sitting, I felt as if I had been hit over the head with too much psychoanalysis. That being said, I overall found the book interesting, and the author is clearly a very talented writer. I just wasn't able to ever fully remove the author from the book. In other words, for a book to get stars five stars from me, an author needs to not only create an interesting, beautiful picture but make me forget that they are even there. I guess i'm a traditionalist and struggled with the unique format of this book but I also feel it deserves a second reading and is a book i'll hold on to.

[tandah_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The narrator (whose name we learn is Faye) is temporarily living in Athens to teach a writing class. During her short visit from the UK, she spends time with a number of people, some who she knows, others she meets. Each has a story; most of the stories have a dark, though not bleak, edge - where the narrator gains a new self-awareness revealing a melancholic dimension to their lives. Faye also is going through a difficult stage - though little is revealed about her thoughts, feelings or circumstances. I think this book is probably great, but I think it will take a second read to confirm.

[sberson_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a writer! Cusk can make a simple conversation seem fascinating. The only thing the novel is lacking is drama.

[berthirsch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

OUTLINE BY Rachel CuskAn enjoyable quick yet insightful read. A writer is invited to Athens, Greece where she is to lead a short seminar in writing. The book relates the different people she interacts with on this trip: the upper middle class man she sits next to on the plane from England, a fellow teacher, students, a Greek publisher, a best-selling Greek poetess and others. The writer, a woman recently divorced with 2 teenage sons back in England, has a knack to get all those she meets to relate intimate details about their lives, their successes, failures, fears, family secrets, dreams and rather mundane details about their lives. In doing so, we gain insight into the ways of life, for the characters she meets, the writer and ourselves.A thoughtful entertaining book.

[wearyhobo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I am deeply baffled. I honestly don't even know.

[lisahistory · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Simply and beautifully written through the conversations that others have with the narrator, about whom we have barely an outline.

[obtusata · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The tone of this book is quite pensive, almost melancholic. The premise worked really well (stories within a story) and I was sad to find myself at the end. It has a quiet beauty to it and made me want to visit Athens.

[sethwilpan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The novel consists of the interactions of the narrator while on a trip to Athens to conduct a writing workshop. One of the last characters we meet in the book explains that after a traumatic experience she was able to reconstruct her identity within the outlines of the negative space surrounding it. This is how we experience the narrator of this novel. There are a few anecdotal episodes that give us glimpses of her personal life, but we experience her predominantly through her own eyes as she interacts with others. As soon as they are introduced each of the characters plunges into the most intimate description of the current state of their life. We are spared the small talk because the aim of the narrator is not to reproduce detail but to distill it. The scenes are set with essential economy and the conversations are uniformly spare and articulate and intelligent, and yet each conveys the distinctive quality of the speaker and they were captivating.
The narrator has the generosity to allow each character the space to be themselves. While real enough, I would characterize the concerns of the characters as bourgeois angst. It is enjoyable prose, and not frivolous, but it did not inspire in me a sense of urgency. It was a worthwhile diversion.

[suesbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The writing and content of this book were very interesting, but I did miss being presented more personal information about the narrator. I am not sure that I would want to read more of Cusk's writing in this style.

[icolford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Rachel Cusk’s episodic novel, Outline, a British writer named Faye has been hired to teach a short-term course in creative writing at a school in Athens. We meet her on the plane to Greece, where she has been engaged in conversation with her seatmate, a Greek gentleman much older than her. During the flight, they share their personal histories, both of which include failed marriages and divorce. It is a probing, deeply confessional conversation, with the participants at pains to explain why their marriages fell apart. It is also a conversation which compels them to reflect upon decisions they’ve made and view the impact of those decisions from the perspective of their interlocutor. The novel proceeds through its ten chapters in this manner, with Faye walking the streets of Athens, going to bars and restaurants, engaged in lengthy conversation with a variety of characters—other teachers, an old friend, the Greek gentleman again, a famous novelist, a famous poet, her students—all of whom use their time in the spotlight to question and probe and speak loquaciously and revealingly about their lives and loves, their needs, their desires, their regrets, their place in the world, and what it means to be male or female, as the case may be. And along the way, through these encounters, the outline of Faye's story is gradually filled in. It will be evident early on that in Outline Rachel Cusk is not striving for the kind of narrative momentum or continuity, or even coherence, that we are taught in writing classes a novel must possess in order to keep the reader turning the pages. In fact, Outline is a novel that deliberately subverts that principle, and is instead built around what could be regarded as a series of random—or, perhaps, selected—encounters. The common factor throughout is Faye. Everything we see and hear is filtered through her consciousness: coloured by her personal experience, her needs, desires, responsibilities and life pressures. Her coolly analytic, cerebral, non-judgmental, sometimes ironic observations about life, marriage, the city she’s visiting, the people in whose company she finds herself, are relentlessly fascinating and endow the book with the forward thrust of a thriller. In the end, Outline seems to suggest that the act of constructing an identity to present to the world is largely futile because other people will determine who we are when they interpret the things we say and do.

[lisapeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this. It's all about show-don't-tell, how a writer can make an entire protagonist out of the negative space created by other characters—a funny, plotless book that makes its point about self-definition by refusing to define the narrator until she just IS. And you think everyone in it is so shallow until you stop reading about them and they sort of... resonate. Interesting sleight of hand there. Plus it triggered, in me, these weird little episodes of deja vu the way a certain pulsing frequency will give epileptics seizures. It's the first of a trilogy, and the second is out—[Transit]—so I want to read that too.She has a really thorny backstory. I can't imagine why anyone wants to write memoirs, but everyone does.

[gwendydd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is about a writer who travels to Greece to teach a writing course, and talks to a lot of people: the guy who sits next to her on the airplane, old friends, friends of friends, colleagues, and her students. Actually, the narrator hardly talks at all: she listens while everyone else talks. Every other character she encounters gets at least one extended monologue, usually relating some experience in their own life. Despite these long monologues, the characters don't really speak in their own voices: sometimes the narrator just passes along what they say, and sometimes even though the words are in quotation marks with "he said" or "she said", it is very clear that these are not their actual words.Cusk's writing is undeniably good, and I devoured the book for her writing alone.... but aside from that, there is no story here, and the characters are generally tedious. The point of the book is that the narrator is a kind of negative space in the book, and the other characters form an outline around her. As each of the other characters talk about their relationships with other people and their careers, the narrator's relationships more or less come into sharper focus. But that's a very tenuous conceit to hang an entire novel on, and in the end I don't think it worked.

[gayla.bassham · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first thing I noticed about Outline is that Rachel Cusk can write. This should not have come as a surprise, but since I was reading this on the heels of finishing I Am China, whose prose was not its strong point, it was more striking than it might have been. The book is packed with masterful descriptions and observations and vignettes. A story one of the protagonist's writing students tells her about a dog named Mimi could be a short story on its own. Open the book to nearly any page and you will find something memorable; this quality makes the book a joy to read. In addition, the structure of the book--which could have been a disaster in lesser hands--is skillfully deployed.

[alisony-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm trying to figure out if I loved this book or not. The fact that I tore through it in one sitting shows that I liked it well enough, but somehow it already feels not particularly memorable. I liked the idea of what Cusk did with the book; the protagonist flies to Athens to teach a week-long writing course, and each chapter focuses on some soul searching conversations she has with various people in that time. Much of this was centred around a search for oneself in the context of failed relationships and the passage of time, and this is perhaps where my star rating started to slide a little, as at times the overwrought philosophising in these conversations got in the way of the novel. Cusk clearly had a perspective she wanted to get across, but for me that goal started to force the story too much, and it could have been achieved more effectively in what was left unsaid and without such extended dialogue.Still, an enjoyable read, but I'm not sure I'll actively seek out book number two in this trilogy.3.5 stars - almost 4 if Cusk had just given the message in the novel room to breathe a little more.

[lukes_171461 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rachel Cusk introduces her readers to a cast of characters in Outline; these characters don’t interact with each other much, and the only action to move the narrative forward is a series of monologues about their lives. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking, Why would I want to read that? Well, you would want to read it for the unique insights that intelligent and articulate people bring to judging themselves and their lives. In Ms. Cusk’s hands, this turns into a very compelling read.Our first-person narrator, a woman whom Ms. Cusk takes the trouble to identify only once in the book - by first name only - meets a talkative Greek gentleman on a flight from London to Athens. This older man recounts the struggles he has had through a series of marriages, and this is the first of our deep and wide-ranging conversations. His tale of woe continues on a couple of jaunts they take together on his powerboat, and the narrator finally confronts him about the self-serving nature of his complaints, and the built-in hopelessness of his approach to women. His reaction to this carries perhaps the central theme here: he confesses his attraction for her and awkwardly approaches her across the deck of his boat to give her a clumsy, ill-aimed kiss, which winds up on her cheek.His refusal or inability to change his attitude toward the people he meets aligns with the other stories told here by other characters. There is the beautiful woman who can’t get past something she overheard her lover tell someone. There is the fellow writing teacher who climbs away from a dreary life of illness and stagnation in Ireland on a stair-climbing machine in America. There is the poetess who encounters the same unstable man, who may or may not be a fan, on all her readings throughout Europe. The narrator subjects her own life to the same kind of scrutiny, and she has imposed a self-exile with her trip to Greece. Ms. Cusk rivets us to the page with the depth of her characters’ observations about life and love and various philosophical issues. There is a wide variance between our private and public domains, for example; in given situations some people immerse themselves in the moment while others become detached, observing for transcribing later. We have observations about the infinite capacity for humans to delude themselves, about how safety and security are illusions, about how people can go through life missing all its essential truths, remaining unaffected by all if it in their small, myopic orbits.Throughout this, the author makes intermittent use of quotation marks, which makes all the speech appear more detached, less personal. Thus are thoughts and beliefs given to the reader, in an exposition in which we must read into the person’s remarks their frustrations and beliefs and hopes.You will need to be prepared to encounter a wide range of ideas at the expense of structured plot; you will need accept self-exposition in place of dramatic action, to enjoy and appreciate this book. It’s fortunate that I am habitually in that realm and could sample these dishes with pleasure.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The main character of Rachel Cusk’s novel, Outline, identifies the Agora as her favourite site in Athens. This ancient market place of goods and ideas quietly symbolizes the narrator’s role as a conduit for those around her to speak. From her neighbour on her flight to Athens where she will be teaching a writing workshop, to her students, to her writing colleagues, Cusk’s narrator seems preternaturally open to letting her interlocutors take the lead. She is not shy about providing frank criticisms (though not of her students), but for the most part she just lets people speak. And thus we get a series of narratives told by others or reported by Cusk’s narrator. These stories or proto-stories are typically reports of some incident in the life of the speaker (they do not originate as “fiction”). Some of these are brief and some are lengthy. Many involve accounts of the dissolution of a marriage. Many involve trauma in some form. Most touch on forms of love, a kind of symposium if you will. Through these narrations, Cusk’s narrator’s time in Athens is measured out. Indeed we know more about her through the kinds of stories people tell her than through any other means. And although she too sometimes speaks publicly — one of the ancient purposes of the Agora — she is usually brusque, providing little more than a summary of her own life situation.I was mesmerized from the start. This is thoroughly excellent writing akin to the stylized semi-autobiographical prose of Sebald or Lerner. It challenges the reader to forego the novelistic norms which we rely upon and to reconsider what a novel is and what it can achieve. For me, that is perhaps the highest achievement for any novel.Certainly recommended.

[annbury_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found this novel to be beautifully written, but at the end unsatisfying. The writing is a real pleasure: sharp, precise, and rich with insights large and small about the way people act and feel. But for me at least, the material did not live up to the quality of the writing, because it did not draw me in to someone else's life. The narrator presents herself in outline only -- "a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her for the first time since the incident a sense of who she now was". This does give the reader lots of interesting stories about other people -- "all the detail filled in around it". But for this reader at least, neither the blank nor the stories of other people's lives were compelling enough to draw me in. Caveat lector: the fact that I couldn't get into this novel, of course, may say a lot more about me than about the novel. One reviewer compared the writing to that of Virginia Woolf; to me shame, I have never been able to "get into" Ms. Woolf's books, except for "Orlando". Those who love Ms. Woolf and other writers of similar rarefaction may well love "Outline". Those who love "Middlemarch" probably won't.

[reganrule · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Interesting premise but this novel didn't do it for me. It is set in modern day Athens and is driven by a series of conversations the narrator (a writer) has with acquaintances and strangers there whilst teaching a Summer writing course. I found the pacing and tone to be too...British, for lack of a better word. The narrator is mirthless, detached and largely opaque, and it is through her disinterested voice that each stranger's narrative is retold. The result is that each life story, no matter how compelling, receives the same blunted treatment. All edges are gone; everyone sounds the same. The result is a dull and lifeless read.

[bodachliath · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a difficult book to summarise. At face value it has almost no plot - a writer travels to Athens to host a creative writing course and has a series of conversations, mostly with strangers. The power lies in the conversations themselves, which cover a wide range of subjects, one might almost say they cover all human life. Cusk's writing is always stylish and perceptive.

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought 10.04 was disjointed - this has even less of a plot! Still, as with Lerner's book, this series of vignettes is deeply involving, with characters met fleetingly but drawn incredibly well. A great post-divorce holiday read.

[carltonc_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very readable, flowing style, mixing interior monologue with reported conversations, or third person monologues. However, although truths are being told, after a while the distance between the narrator and the stories being heard, lead me to emotional detachment. Although individually poignant, the truths in the stories are not great truths, revelatory truths, they are everyday truths, so that I began to wonder what is this narrative torrent all about?This is the first of a trilogy of novels, and I finished it feeling that I was very much engaged in a work in progress, exploring consciousness and trying to verbalise approaches. I am interested, but am suspending judgement on whether it is all pretentious waffle or something meaningful.He was describing, in other words, what she herself was not: in everything he said about himself, she found in her own nature a corresponding negative. This anti-description, for want of a better way of putting it, had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition: while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her for the first time since the incident a sense of who she now was.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was kind of OK - there was never really any question of dropping out before the finish - but it really did fail to capture my involvement. Of course that my be my 'fault', but I found that we didn't really get involved with the characters enough for my liking. They all spoke about their lives with a great distance, despite the fact that several were talking about very dramatic and emotional events. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about Cusk's writing that keeps me distant, but whatever it is I think I will now cross her off my To Read list forever. I started her work wanting to read more, but I think I am now completely satiated.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was on the Scotiabank Giller shortlist but it doesn't hold a candle to the winner, Fifteen Dogs, in my opinion. The books inclusion on the shortlist was rather controversial I understand since Rachel Cusk lives in England and qualifies only by virtue of having been born in Canada. Certainly there is nothing remotely connected to Canada in this book.The back of the book describes it as a novel in ten conversations but I can't believe real people have conversations like this. Who tells the person sitting next to them on a plane the details of two marriages and divorces? Who tells someone they have never met before about a dream involving menstrual blood? Who starts off a conversation with a stranger with an account of an attack by a mugger that involved strangulation? And above all, what woman would give their neighbour on the plane their phone number and address and then agree to go out on a boat with him? It all just lacked credibility.Don't think I'll be hunting down any more books by Rachel Cusk.

[whatsmacksaid · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The pleasure in reading "Outline" lies in how well written it is. It's pleasurable in a cerebral kind of way.

[ldvoorberg · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not really a collection of short stories, but hardly a traditional novel, either. One character goes to Athens for a week to teach a writing course. On the plane ride she meets a man who tells her of his life, and then we hear the stories of many other people she meets. It's sort of writing by telling, not showing, because the stories are told by the people who lived them, so they include their own perspective or commentary into the stories. It makes for a very detached reading experience, everyone stays at arm's length from the reader. It feels a bit boring, and yet the tales have a lot of interesting perspective on life and how we deal with the people in our lives, how we perceive them and then reflect back, and how we choose to interpret and present these interactions. So in some ways the writing is rather deep, but you have to choose to go there, not just sit back and wait to be entertained.