Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Summary and Reviews of Outline by Rachel Cusk

Outline by Rachel Cusk

Outline

A Novel

by Rachel Cusk
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 13, 2015, 256 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2016, 256 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Outline bears all the hallmarks of Rachel Cusk at her best. The finely crafted prose reveals a virtuosity in her command of language which is rendered with an admirable lightness of touch. The nature of life, love, and loss are recurring themes throughout her work and in Outline they are as insightfully explored as ever. This is a fiercely intelligent, emotionally intuitive novel. While at times its sheer profundity can be overwhelming, if not a little intimidating, this book has something to offer anyone who has discovered, like the narrator and her interlocutors, that "there is no such thing as life without pain."..continued

Full Review (608 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Sinéad Fitzgibbon).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Made in Greece

In choosing to set Outline in Athens, Rachel Cusk is the latest in a long line of authors, poets and playwrights who have gravitated toward or drawn inspiration from Greece - its geography, its history and its vast canon of ancient writings.

The tradition of Grecian influence on literature began over two thousand years ago when the scribes of the Roman Empire began to borrow heavily from their earlier Greek counterparts. The plays of Plautus, for example, were influenced markedly by Ancient Greek comedies while the Roman poet Catullus adapted Greek lyrical verse into Latin. Indeed, Latin translations of Grecian literature remained popular until medieval times. And let's not forget perhaps the most enduring original poetic work of the ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Outline, try these:

  • The Anthropologists jacket

    The Anthropologists

    by Aysegül Savas

    Published 2024

    About this book

    More by this author

    Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family?

  • Either/Or jacket

    Either/Or

    by Elif Batuman

    Published 2023

    About this book

    More by this author

    From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood.

We have 12 read-alikes for Outline, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Rachel Cusk
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Everything We Never Had
    Everything We Never Had
    by Randy Ribay
    Francisco Maghabol has recently arrived in California from the Philippines, eager to earn money to ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Win This Book
Win My Darling Boy

My Darling Boy by John Dufresne

The story of of a man whose son collapses into addiction and vanishes into the chaotic netherworld of southern Florida.

Enter

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now