Cusk

More and more it becomes apparent that Rachel Cusk's theme in her novel Transit is invisible women, women who believe they have lost their place in the world - starting w her narrator, who seems to be a near stand-in for the author without the burden of veracity that a true memoir (of which cusk has written several) would entail. She is "in transit" between dwelling and relationships - her ex-husband and her children are on the periphery as she moves into a rundown house and hires workers to do a completed renovation. We see her in one chapter meeting w a younger, aspiring writer in a room w all of the furniture covered in plastic sheeting. We know over the course of this move so much about a large # of people - friends and near strangers - but so little about the narrator. As to the others - we see the aspiring writer, a professional food photographer, who wants to write a book about an American artist (marsden?) because, she oddly asserts, she has literally become him. She needs more than a writing coach!, and the narrator offers her no useful advice. We meet a friend of the narrator who is also revamping her flat and in a relationship w the contractor - who now she says is working for love not money. There is a sense of the remodeling (this woman works in fashion tho she is not herself fashionable) as a form of self-effacement. We also hear from one of the workers on the narrator's project, an Albanian immigrant who is proud of how well his young daughter speaks English but laments that his wife knows no English and cannot really communicate w their daughter - marginalized or exiled in her own deracinated family.

Sent from my iPhone