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A review by gajanperry
Second Place by Rachel Cusk
3.0
So many moments of typical brilliance in this, and passages which will open your mind up to itself in ways you've never known. Something very Ishiguro about this novel, in the way that character and narrative is revealed through place, and how the narrative voice creates its own sounding board.
On the other hand, there are lines which you will genuinely read a dozen times and take in absolutely no meaning from. This seems to be a pattern among things I've read recently, but I don't know what editors are doing to leave in prose from otherwise brilliant authors which are so blatantly esoteric (the kind of writing my 16yo self would contrive and my HS literature teacher would criticise as being "abstruse and ornate"). I also thought the narrative was epistemelogically crowded (very abstruse and ornate of me), and seems to shift rapidly between different themes which never reconcile and don't sit comfortably against each other.
Still, loved this novel. Took me much longer to read than anticipated because I had to keep writing things down, or otherwise stop reading for several minutes to spiral into ruminations (unsure if this is a good or bad symptom of reading, currently conducting empirical review).
On the other hand, there are lines which you will genuinely read a dozen times and take in absolutely no meaning from. This seems to be a pattern among things I've read recently, but I don't know what editors are doing to leave in prose from otherwise brilliant authors which are so blatantly esoteric (the kind of writing my 16yo self would contrive and my HS literature teacher would criticise as being "abstruse and ornate"). I also thought the narrative was epistemelogically crowded (very abstruse and ornate of me), and seems to shift rapidly between different themes which never reconcile and don't sit comfortably against each other.
Still, loved this novel. Took me much longer to read than anticipated because I had to keep writing things down, or otherwise stop reading for several minutes to spiral into ruminations (unsure if this is a good or bad symptom of reading, currently conducting empirical review).