A review by ci_reads
Outline by Rachel Cusk

reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This book follows a woman traveling to Greece to teach a writing seminar after the break up of her marriage, and we see little vignettes throughout her trip of people she meets and the stories they tell about themselves. There is very little plot, and the book is largely a collection of conversations between the main character and her colleagues, students, friends, and strangers. 

The writing was quite beautiful, and I found myself highlighting many passages of astute observations of human emotion and motivation, but I can't say I enjoyed the book or that I would read something else by this author. It was interesting in that it really reflected humanity through each conversation and mirrored the experience of what it is like to listen other human beings, but overall, I just don't think it was my cup of tea. 

Also, who on earth goes sailing alone with a man they met the day before on an airplane...

I replied that I wasn't sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you actually were, or indeed to separate what you were from what you had become through the other person.

It was a funny idea, writing in a language not your own. It almost makes you feel guilty, she said, the way people feel forced to use English, how much of themselves must get left behind in that translation, like people being told to leave their homes and take only a few essential items with them. Yet there was also a purity to that image that attracted her, filled as it was with possibilities of self-reinvention. To be freed from clutter, both mental and verbal, was in some ways an appealing prospect; until you remembered something you needed that you had to leave behind.
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