Kudos
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4.3 • 12 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
'One of the most astoundingly original and necessary books I've ever read.'
Guardian
'A landmark in twenty-first-century English literature.'
Observer
'A perfect synthesis of form and content.'
Deborah Levy
A woman on a plane listens to the stranger in the seat next to hers telling her the story of his life: his work, his marriage, and the harrowing night he has just spent burying the family dog. That woman is Faye, who is on her way to Europe to promote the book she has just published. Once she reaches her destination, the conversations she has with the people she meets - about art, about family, about politics, about love, about sorrow and joy, about justice and injustice - include the most far-reaching questions human beings ask. These conversations, the last of them on the phone with her son, rise dramatically and majestically to a beautiful conclusion.
Following the novels Outline and Transit, Kudos completes Rachel Cusk's trilogy with overwhelming power.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cusk's final book in a trilogy (after Outline and Transit) expertly concludes the story of protagonist Faye, a British author, as she travels Europe to speak at writers' conferences and give interviews. Since the events of the previous book, Faye has remarried and her sons have grown into teenagers, one of whom is preparing to leave for university to study art history. Yet the novel, like its predecessors, eschews chronicling Faye's life via traditional narrative, instead filling each page with conversations with and monologues by the many writers, journalists, and publicists she meets during her travels. Shifting away from the last book's focus on life's journey, Cusk now places Faye in a series of back-and-forths on duality in family, art, and representation. In Germany, Faye talks to an interviewer about jealousy. Later, a young tour guide explains his thoughts on education, gender, and rewarding intelligence (it is here where the novel receives its title); at another stop, Faye is audience to a series of journalists who discuss honesty and workplace inequality. As always, Cusk's ear for dialogue and language is stunning. The author ends Faye's trilogy with yet another gem.
Customer Reviews
The goddess of conversation ..
If Italo Calvino were reborn, he would be reinhabited by Rachel cusk. The godlike vertex - where humour, disdain, irony, compassion and steadfast awe are revealed in a simple, poetic force of wavelike rhythm of almost random conversations on the toes of our reading minds is both humble and resplendent.
Read it accidentally, and it will build purpose as a sand dune, layered with the wicked sparkling eyes of a cheeky god, in a beautiful burnt out church of your internal cave. Neil Maizels.