Scan barcode
A review by teresatumminello
Transit by Rachel Cusk
4.0
I had found out more, I said, by listening than I ever thought possible.
In this second installment of a trilogy, the narrator Faye (only named once, as she was in the first book, [b:Outline|24368387|Outline|Rachel Cusk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1422660380l/24368387._SX50_.jpg|40698498]) continues her listening ‘project,’ though with more of letting us into her life. She comes across as emotionless, almost affectless; but there’s no way she is. She just isn’t telling us, or even showing us, how she feels. As with one event in [b:Outline|24368387|Outline|Rachel Cusk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1422660380l/24368387._SX50_.jpg|40698498], I supplied the emotion, though it didn’t happen until near the end.
We don’t really know how Faye feels during the struggles of house renovation, nasty neighbors, dealing with children, and more. We don’t know how she feels when the unnamed Chair of a literary festival makes a pass at her. We get only one hint of her emotion when another character, after asking Faye a question, notices she’s blushing.
Despite more glimpses into her life than in the first book, this book basically follows the same structure of recording, in Faye’s words, the stories of others. The most effective of these is the story of a “beautiful” dog, an example of “showing-not-telling” in Faye’s writing class, when she is initially silent as a student takes the teacher-role.
After finishing the book, I thought of the “beautiful” dog in contrast with the nasty neighbors’ pitiable dog. The image of Faye’s torn-up house as being ‘seen-through’ exists as a comparison to an earlier story told by one of the renovators. His story is of the house he built in Poland for his family; he purposely designed it to seem as if it had no outer or inner walls. There’s even more to be parsed.
A scene near the end is a perfectly rendered one of almost-absurdity, of almost laughing then almost crying—not by the characters, but by the reader. Also near the end, a character elaborates on how he had to train himself from subconsciously wanting ‘comfort food’ to consciously desiring the delicacies he now creates. I wonder if this is what Cusk is trying to do for her readers. Though I’ve commented on the ‘end,’ there’s nothing to spoil in this book: it’s all in the writing.
In this second installment of a trilogy, the narrator Faye (only named once, as she was in the first book, [b:Outline|24368387|Outline|Rachel Cusk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1422660380l/24368387._SX50_.jpg|40698498]) continues her listening ‘project,’ though with more of letting us into her life. She comes across as emotionless, almost affectless; but there’s no way she is. She just isn’t telling us, or even showing us, how she feels. As with one event in [b:Outline|24368387|Outline|Rachel Cusk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1422660380l/24368387._SX50_.jpg|40698498], I supplied the emotion, though it didn’t happen until near the end.
We don’t really know how Faye feels during the struggles of house renovation, nasty neighbors, dealing with children, and more. We don’t know how she feels when the unnamed Chair of a literary festival makes a pass at her. We get only one hint of her emotion when another character, after asking Faye a question, notices she’s blushing.
Despite more glimpses into her life than in the first book, this book basically follows the same structure of recording, in Faye’s words, the stories of others. The most effective of these is the story of a “beautiful” dog, an example of “showing-not-telling” in Faye’s writing class, when she is initially silent as a student takes the teacher-role.
After finishing the book, I thought of the “beautiful” dog in contrast with the nasty neighbors’ pitiable dog. The image of Faye’s torn-up house as being ‘seen-through’ exists as a comparison to an earlier story told by one of the renovators. His story is of the house he built in Poland for his family; he purposely designed it to seem as if it had no outer or inner walls. There’s even more to be parsed.
A scene near the end is a perfectly rendered one of almost-absurdity, of almost laughing then almost crying—not by the characters, but by the reader. Also near the end, a character elaborates on how he had to train himself from subconsciously wanting ‘comfort food’ to consciously desiring the delicacies he now creates. I wonder if this is what Cusk is trying to do for her readers. Though I’ve commented on the ‘end,’ there’s nothing to spoil in this book: it’s all in the writing.