Second Place
Ratings22
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings22
Average rating4.1
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.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm really surprised by how much I actually enjoyed this book, there isn't much actually happening and it's entirely told in the form of someone telling someone else about it, it shouldn't have worked so well for me but it did. There's just something about the writing and the character that drew me in and kept me reading.
3.5 rounded up
But my time belongs to me, be careful what you ask people to endure.
I stumbled across the work of Rachel Cusk through Second Place and I now feel there will be reading before Rachel Cusk and reading after. Like no other book before, it had me laughing with delight, blown away by Cusk's voice: her depth of perception, construction of conflict, connections of thought, word choice, and perhaps most surprisingly of all her use of the exclamation point. Second Place was genius.
