Rachel Cusk est une auteure dont les œuvres sont reconnues pour leur exploration incisive de thèmes personnels et sociétaux à travers un style narratif innovant. Sa prose, souvent inspirée d'éléments autobiographiques, plonge dans les complexités des relations humaines, de l'identité et de la recherche de sens dans le monde contemporain. Cusk sonde les états psychologiques profonds de ses personnages tout en remettant en question les formes narratives traditionnelles. Sa voix distinctive offre aux lecteurs une expérience provocatrice et réflexive.
Les Bradshaw inversent les rôles. Thomas abandonne un métier lucratif pour s'occuper du foyer et Tonie, sa femme, reprend un poste à l'université. Le quotidien est bouleversé : artiste, il apprend le piano ; ambitieuse, elle monte en grade. Jour après jour, le nouvel équilibre vacille et le couple se déchire au rythme des ambitions déçues, des rancoeurs inavouées et des révélations intimes.
Le jour où le balcon de sa maison s'écroule et manque de le tuer, Michael décide qu'il est temps de changer d'air. Sa femme Rebecca, une trentenaire névrosée et dépressive, est soulagée de le voir partir une semaine avec leur fils de trois ans pour Egypt Farm. Michael va y retrouver les Hanbury, figures mythiques de sa jeunesse. Mais les fêtes d'hier sont terminées, et l'excentricité bohème de la famille Hanbury a tourné au cauchemar. Autour de Paul, le patriarche malade, de sa nouvelle femme, Vivian, et de son fils, Adam, tout n'est plus que déception, échec, et renoncement. Egypt Farm est le roman des illusions perdues. Rachel Cusk y fait déjà preuve d'un sens inné de la comédie humaine, avant Arlington Park, qui confirmera ses talents d'observatrice et son humour ravageur.
Les femmes d'Arlington Park -une banlieue résidentielle en Angleterre- ont tout pour être heureuses. En apparence. Car il n'en est rien.
Romancière qui s'est isolée depuis son second mariage avec Tony, M. n'écrit plus mais rêve d'accueillir pour une résidence d'artistes L., un peintre renommé qu'elle admire. Il finit par accepter son invitation mais se présente en compagnie d'une jeune fiancée irritante, de sa fille et du compagnon de cette dernière. Les six adultes cohabitent mais des tensionsapparaissent rapidement.
In the wake of her family's collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions - personal, moral, artistic, and practical - as she endeavours to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life. Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility and the mystery of change. '[Transit] confirms that one of the most fascinating projects in contemporary fiction is unfolding in Rachel Cusk's trilogy.' Adam Foulds
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book, this memoir by multi-award-winning author Rachel Cusk explores the transformative experience of motherhood. Selected as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by the New York Times, it delves into the contradictions of motherhood, portraying it as both commonplace and unimaginable, prosaic yet mysterious. Cusk reflects on the dualities of this role—banal yet bizarre, compelling yet tedious—capturing the essence of becoming a mother as a solitary performance in a drama of human existence. Her narrative reveals how an ordinary life morphs into a tale of profound passions, love, servitude, confinement, and compassion. With humor and insight, Cusk recounts a year of modern motherhood, weaving together stories of lost freedom, lessons in humility, and the roots of love. This memoir serves as a meditation on madness and mortality, offering a sentimental education in the realities of parenting—babies, books, toddler groups, and the challenges of never being alone. The New York Times Book Review praises it as "funny and smart," likening it to a war diary, describing it as wholly original and unabashedly true.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Stella Benson answers a classified ad for an au pair, arriving in a tiny Sussex village that's home to a family that is slightly larger than life. Her hopes for the Maddens may be high, but her station among them is low and remote. It soon becomes clear that Stella falls short of even the meager specifications her new role requires, most visibly in the area of "aptitude for the country life." But what drove her to leave her home, job, and life in London in the first place? Why has she severed all ties with her parents? Why is she so reluctant to discuss her past? And who, exactly, is Edward? The Country Life is a rich and subtle novel about embarrassment, awkwardness, and being alone; about families, or the lack of them; and about love in some peculiar guises. Rachel Cusk's widely praised novel is a captivating tale of one young woman's adventures in self-discovery.
World premiere of a new version of Euripides' classic Medea. Plays in London as part of the Almeida's Greek Season. Medea's marriage is breaking up. And so is everything else. Testing the limits of revenge and liberty, Euripides' seminal play cuts to the heart of gender politics and asks what it means to be a woman and a wife. One of world drama's most infamous characters is brought to controversial new life by Almeida Artistic Director Rupert Goold (The Merchant of Venice, King Charles III, American Psycho) and award-winning writer Rachel Cusk (Outline, Aftermath).
Cusk ist besser als Knausgård. Berliner Zeitung
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION A woman arrives in Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Once there, 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 voices begins to weave a complex human tapestry: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself. SHORTLISTED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE, THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE AND LONGLISTED FOR THE IMPAC PRIZE