Bücher von Rachel Cusk

New paperback edition of the novel from the dazzlingly talented author of the Baileys-shortlisted Outline.

When first published in 2001, it divided female critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk's children were taken into care, that was she was unfit to look after them. Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself and the book as protests grew about the its honest, gritty account of the misery of those early months. It is a seminal, stand-out book on the complications of being an ambivalent mum in an age of white-washed, Annabel Karmel'd new families.

A woman writer goes to Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Though her own circumstances remain indistinct, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives, as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives.Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.

A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally between our internal and external worlds. With its examination of the possibility that art can both save and destroy us, Second Place is deeply affirming of the human soul, while grappling with its darkest demons.

From the acclaimed author of the Outline trilogy, a fable of human destiny and decline, enacted in a closed system of intimate, fractured relationships. - A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally between our internal and external worlds. With its examination of the possibility that art can both save and destroy us, Second Place is deeply affirming of the human soul, while grappling with its darkest demons.

A vivid and elegant memoir of a familyΓÇÖs season abroad by the author of the Outline trilogy.When Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey, chronicled in The Last Supper, leads them to both the expected and the surprising, all seen through CuskΓÇÖs sharp and humane perspective.

Eine Frau lädt einen berühmten Maler in ihr Haus in einer abgelegenen Küstenregion ein. Es ist ein erdrückend heißer Sommer, und sie hofft, sein künstlerischer Blick werde das Geheimnis ihres Lebens und ihrer Landschaft lüften. Nur kommt es ganz anders. Denn nicht nur weigert er sich, sie zu malen, er meidet sie geradezu, scheint sie regelrecht vorzuführen in ihrer Bedürftigkeit. Und verbündet sich unterdessen mit ihrem Mann, und nähert er sich nicht auch ihrer Tochter an? (Deren Schönheit und Jugend sie nicht gleichgültig lassen.) Was soll sie tun? Sich kampflos ergeben? Oder versuchen, auch gegen ihre zum Leben erwachten Dämonen anzukämpfen und ihren Willen durchzusetzen? Der andere Ort ist ein atmosphärisch hoch entzündliches Kammerspiel. Rachel Cusk erzählt darin von weiblichem Schicksal und männlichem Privileg, von der dramatischen Geometrie menschlicher Beziehungen und von Kunst, die uns retten - oder zerstören kann.

Since quitting work to look after his eight-year-old daughter, Alexa, Thomas Bradshaw has found solace and nourishment in his daily piano study. But his parents and in-laws wonder why he has swapped roles with Tonie Swann, his intense, intellectual wife. And how can this be good for their daughter?Tonie is increasingly seduced away from domestic life by the headier world of work, where long-forgotten memories of ambition are awakened. She finds herself outside their tight family circle, alive to previously unimaginable possibilities. Over the course of a year full of crisis and revelation, we follow their fortunes, and The Bradshaw Variations shows Rachel Cusk to be a lyrically subversive writer at the height of her powers.

Was passiert mit uns, wenn unsere eigenen Eltern plötzlich aufhören, mit uns zu reden? Warum scheint sich Grobschlächtigkeit weltweit öffentlich durchzusetzen? Kann man ein Haus bauen, ohne den Verstand zu verlieren? Warum regredieren wir beim Autofahren so spektakulär? (Sollten unsere SUVs die Airbags nicht besser außen haben?) Und wie kann es gelingen, gleichzeitig Mutter, Tochter, Ehefrau, Staatsbürgerin, Künstlerin und breadwinner für die ganze Familie zu sein? (Achtung, Spoiler: schwierig!) Rachel Cusk ist eine unerbittlich humorvolle Selbsterforscherin und eine Poetin der gespaltenen Gefühle. Coventry versammelt eine Reihe ihrer glänzenden Essays, hochaufgelöste, tiefenscharfe Meisterstücke. Sie zu lesen bedeutet, sich den weitreichenden Ungewissheiten zu stellen, die wir alltags lieber nicht beachten.

A vivid and elegant account of a family's season abroad by one of our finest contemporary authorsCasting off a northern winter and an orderly life, a family decides to sell everything and go to Italy to search for art and its meanings, for freedom from routine, for a different path into the future. The award-winning writer Rachel Cusk describes a three-month journey around the Italy of Raphael and rented villas, of the Piero della Francesca trail and the tourist furnace of Amalfi, of soccer and the simple glories of pasta and gelato. With her husband and two children, Cusk uncovers the mystery of a foreign language, the perils and pleasures of unbelonging, and the startling thrill of discovery -- at once historic and intimate. Both sharp and humane in its exploration of the desire to travel and to escape, of art and its inspirations, of beauty and ugliness, and of the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity, The Last Supper is an astonishing memoir.

Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best First NovelAgnes Day is mildly discontent. As a child, she never wanted to be an Agnes-she wanted to be a pleasing Grace. Alas, she remained the terminally middle class, hopelessly romantic Agnes. Now she's living with her two best friends in London and working at a trade magazine. Life and love seem to go on without her. Not only does she not know how to get back into the game, she isn't even sure what the game is. But she gives a good performance-until she learns that her roommates and her boyfriend are keeping secrets from her, and that her boss is quitting and leaving her in charge. In great despair, she decides to make it her business to set things straight. Saving Agnes is a perceptive, fresh, and honest novel that has delighted readers and critics on both sides of the Atlantic.

A New York Times Notable Book of the YearWinner of the Somerset Maugham AwardThe Country Life, Rachel Cusk's third novel, is a rich and subtle story about embarrassment, awkwardness, and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises."A brilliant oxymoron-a serious farce . . . Cusk's ability to keep us interested in innumerable human collisions is uncanny." -The New YorkerStella Benson sets off for Hilltop, a tiny Sussex village housing a family that is somewhat larger-than-life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them-as au pair to their irascible son, Martin-is undeniably low. What could possibly have driven her to leave her home, job, and life in London for such rural ignominy? Why has she severed all contact with her parents? And why is she so reluctant to talk about her past?

A haunting fable of art, family, and fate from the author of the Outline trilogy.A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in the remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the center of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma-and disrupts the calm of her secluded household.Second Place, Rachel Cusk's electrifying new novel, is a study of female fate and male privilege, the geometries of human relationships, and the moral questions that animate our lives. It reminds us of art's capacity to uplift-and to destroy.