Reviews - The Temporary | The StoryGraph

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54 reviews for:

The Temporary

Rachel Cusk

3.24 AVERAGE

jmreadingisahobby's review against another edition

4.5

funny reflective tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

jesskuuh's review against another edition

2.0

medium-paced

mn_os's review against another edition

2.0

I need to stop reading Rachel Cusk books.

annegreen's review against another edition

2.0

This is Rachel Cusk's second novel. I haven't yet read her first but having read a few of her latest and been impressed by them, this one is clearly a very low step on the ladder of her novelistic trajectory. I'm not sure why I kept ploughing on with it, maybe in the (unrealised) hopes it would redeem itself. Her early work has been likened to Henry James, among others, and insofar as the prose is convoluted, overwrought and meandering, it is. But we don't expect Henry James in 1995 (the year of its publication). Apart from being overwritten, its weighed down to the point of torpidity by cumbersome metaphors that mostly don't work. Perhaps she hadn't been long out of a creative writing learning environment where she was told lots of metaphors make the writing more vivid. And they do, but used judiciously and with moderation. Here they leap out shouting "look at me" from almost every paragraph. As an example:

"He had done wrong, a terrible, intractable wrong reached by a steep stairway of mistakes and failures, from whose top he could view all the things he should have done and realise only how far he was from them. His helplessness could not absolve him: he had failed to defend what was his as it floated alone in its troubled sea, had abandoned where he should have protected, had cast away his fragile creation and left it to cower at the drip of wine-toxic blood, the rooting jabs of a stranger, the unfriendly air in which he himself was betrayed and reviled."

The characters are horrors - all of them. Pretentious, self-absorbed, vacillating, vacuous and wildly irritating.

We can only be thankful she's improved beyond bounds since this one.

lilyreadsandposts's review against another edition

2.0

Browsing a bookstore in Vancouver I happened upon a shelf of Rachel Cusk's books, each one more tantalising than the last. I read every blurb, wondering which one to read, liking all -- eventually picking this one, since it was the first one on the shelf I'd seen.

Unfortunately, Cusk and I have not started out well. I have high hopes for the future of our relationship, though, as I later found out that The Temporary was one of her first books. I have great faith in her later work (and praying this faith is not misguided because I really loved the sound of those other blurbs) and am excited to read more from her.

It is with great regret that I rate The Temporary 2 stars, because for most of the book I thought it would be three. The novel was overwritten, but I had no problem with that -- like with my forage into Henry James, who many critique as overwritten, I scarcely noticed it. When I compare The Turn of the Screw's writing to the writing here in The Temporary, I must admit I do prefer the former. The Temporary was... very bland.

I am not opposed to unlikeable main characters, and enjoyed both of the protagonists. I thought the plot was a bit loose, the ending a bit too ambiguous, and all in all I either missed the point of the book entirely or there wasn't one at all. I prefer to think of it being the latter.