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A review by nathansnook
Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation by Rachel Cusk
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.25
Only reaffirms that I don't want to get married!
Compelling. Came in thinking I'd get a cause-and-effect narrative, but all I got were heavy metaphors on egalitarian life. How funny for me to have read this just before my rewatch of a film I haven't seen in ages, 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘷𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘪𝘭. The two speak to each other in an odd way. It's the harvest. The bounty. The great unknown. To be so brave to leave something built on years and trust. Only to imagine the idea of an-other life.
A lot of people seem to have issues with the wandering subject matter at the meat of the book, but are we not going to talk about how she compares her and her husband to transvestites?? I understand what Cusk was going for, the deconstruction of gender-conforming roles, but did she really have to stoop so low and use such an embarrassingly poor and insensitive comparison? This could've easily been edited out, and I hope in future editions, that this bit be removed, given that this feels very much like a heavy-handed diary thoughts than a memoir.
All in all, ends brilliantly in Cusk's usual-writerly way with the last piece, tying life to fiction, and a writer's life.
Compelling. Came in thinking I'd get a cause-and-effect narrative, but all I got were heavy metaphors on egalitarian life. How funny for me to have read this just before my rewatch of a film I haven't seen in ages, 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘷𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘪𝘭. The two speak to each other in an odd way. It's the harvest. The bounty. The great unknown. To be so brave to leave something built on years and trust. Only to imagine the idea of an-other life.
A lot of people seem to have issues with the wandering subject matter at the meat of the book, but are we not going to talk about how she compares her and her husband to transvestites?? I understand what Cusk was going for, the deconstruction of gender-conforming roles, but did she really have to stoop so low and use such an embarrassingly poor and insensitive comparison? This could've easily been edited out, and I hope in future editions, that this bit be removed, given that this feels very much like a heavy-handed diary thoughts than a memoir.
All in all, ends brilliantly in Cusk's usual-writerly way with the last piece, tying life to fiction, and a writer's life.