In the wake of her family’s collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of this upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions—personal, moral, artistic, and practical—as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.
Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change.
In this second book of a precise and short yet epic cycle, Cusk describes the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one’s life, and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.
About «Transit», Farrar, Straus and Giroux
«I have to experience things, as unconsciously as possible, and then reexperience them as an artist.»
«Discipline is a massive component of creating a body of work, and the further I get, the more I see that this really is true.»
«I don’t think talent is necessarily something handed out, I think desire is very powerful in making expressive work.»
Excerpt from the interview «Rachel Cusk Interview: You Can Live the Wrong Life», Louisina Channel
Rachel Cusk is the author of Outline, Transit, the memoirs A Life’s Work, The Last Supper, and Aftermath, and several novels: Saving Agnes, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award; The Temporary; The Country Life, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Lucky Ones; In the Fold; Arlington Park; and The Bradshaw Variations. She was chosen as one of Granta’s 2003 Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in London.
Credits
Photo Author: Louisina Channel
Photo Book: Suhrkamp
Biography: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Post created by
Laura Hilti, Kunstverein Schichtwechsel