Transit

by Rachel Cusk

Overview

National Bestseller • A Finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize • A Finalist for the Goldsmiths Prize • Longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award • One of Time Magazine's Top 10 Fiction Books of the Year

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Guardian, BOMB Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Commonweal, Southern Living, NOW Magazine, The Washington Independent Review of Books, Book Depository, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post (Canada)

The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of 2015

In the wake of her family’s collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of this upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions—personal, moral, artistic, and practical—as she endeavors 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.

In this second book of a precise, short, yet epic cycle, Cusk describes the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one’s life, and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374278625
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	01/17/2017
Series:	Outline Trilogy Series , #2
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Rachel Cusk is the author of three memoirs—A Life’s Work, The Last Supper, and Aftermath—and several novels: Saving Agnes, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award; The Temporary; The Country Life, which won a SomersetMaugham Award; The Lucky Ones; In the Fold; Arlington Park; The Bradshaw Variations; and Outline. She was chosen as one of Granta’s 2003 Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

Time invested in Rachel Cusk's work is never ill spent. There is so much to luxuriate in. Her sentences are like artfully laid little paths in a beautiful bit of woods. In Transit, she allows an astrologer's email to lead the reader in. "She could sense — the email continued — that I had lost my way in life, that I sometimes struggled to find meaning in my present circumstances and to feel hope for what was to come; she felt a strong personal connection between us, and while she couldn't explain the feeling, she knew too that some things defy explanation."

Cusk is always playing at something, and here it seems to be the way an ordinary reader is invited to trust a novelist, usually in ways we are scarcely aware of in the moment. The world is big and confusing, and we find ourselves wanting guidance. Some people like to find it in churches; others like to find it in fiction. But Cusk is one of those novelists — and they abound right now, from Ben Lerner to Sheila Heti — who are looking to trouble that relationship. This isn't a matter of that well-known tool of the novelist, the "unreliable narrator." In both Outline, her previous novel, and Transit, which is technically a sequel, Cusk is trying, subtly but unmistakably, to disrupt the comforts of the novel.

In Outline, Cusk let readers know not to expect a tightly woven exercise in storytelling. We gather that our unnamed narrator is living in the aftermath of a divorce. Aimless, she ends up in Athens and somehow becomes the sounding board for a number of stories from other people about the dissolution of their own relationships. Things do happen to our narrator, even things that an ordinary plot- junkie novelist would consider exciting: she goes out on a boat with a strange man, for example. But even as these things happen, she is disconnected from the expectations others might have if they heard her story. She tells us so explicitly:

It struck me that some people might think I was stupid, to go out alone on a boat with a man I didn't know. But what other people thought was no longer of any help to me. Those thoughts only existed within certain structures, and I had definitively left those structures.

Transit proceeds along similar lines, with even less concern for plot than its predecessor: instead of hearing people's confessions about their feuds with ex-wives and parents, the narrator hears a lot of stories from others about being lost. The narrator, too, is of course lost; she's living in a new house with complaining neighbors underfoot, and builders are ripping it up for a remodel. She is, like everyone she meets, in transit from one psychological place to another — the connection between the novel and the subject of its title is just that literal. In a particularly meta moment, our narrator — who is a writer — goes to a literary festival. There she listens to two men give a lecture about the costs of autobiographical writing.

And the blabbing, the telling, was the messiest thing of all: getting control of the language was getting control of anger and shame and it was hard, hard to turn it around, to take the mess of experience and make something coherent out of it.

Does all this blabbing sound a bit tedious? I fear that it does; I fear that this sort of book has nothing to say to vast swaths of humanity. There are, of course, people who spend a lot of time reading book criticism. Those people recognize some elements of what Cusk is doing as something called "autofiction." She has fellow travelers in that: Chris Kraus, Ben Lerner, Sheila Heti, Teju Cole, Tao Lin. You can overstate those writers' commonalities, but some are discernible: Deliberately artless, often unapologetically boring, collapsing the distance between a narrator and an author, these books are said to seek to import more of what feels like "reality" into fiction. These writers want to push the limits of the novel's possibility. Life is boring, the notion goes. Perhaps fiction should have some element of that aridity in it, too.

It's not hard to see the intellectual allure of these ideas. But sometimes, as I read Transit, I had questions about whether or not any of this was really improving fiction in the way that the intellectual justification seems to imply. One does not get the impression, for example, that what Cusk is actually importing into the novel is unadulterated experience. What she is giving it is a lulling drift that almost no one ever feels in the ordinary course of a day, graceful passages that don't really match up to what Joan Didion once called, in her own essay on the inconsistencies of storytelling, "the phantasmagoria of everyday experience."

The offer made by that astrologer, after all, is not so different than the one a writer like Cusk offers her reader. Though mostly a vessel for other people's stories in Outline and Transit, there is a certain elegance to the existence this narrator has. She does not seem to fear anything. She does not seem to want anything. And above all, she never seems uncertain about who she is or what she's doing. Perhaps Cusk herself really feels that way. Perhaps she is a model of calm receptiveness. But in her own way she's making the same fantastical promises that women with crystal balls make. Live through disaster, her books seem to say. Don't worry, we'll make it beautiful together.

Michelle Dean is a journalist, critic, and erstwhile lawyer whose writing has appeared at The New Yorker, Slate, The Nation, and The Awl.

Reviewer: Michelle Dean

The Barnes & Noble Review

[Transit] is the second novel of a trilogy…in which Rachel Cusk's project appears to be nothing less than the reinvention of the form itself…Cusk has torn up the rule book, and in the process created a work of stunning beauty, deep insight and great originality…a meditation on the nature of self, freedom, narrative and reality. Best of all, she has given us all this in a novel that is compulsively readable…Cusk can…be funny and has a fine ear for dialogue…While her prose style is economical, she has a flair for imagery, sometimes bordering on the Dickensian…Transit is a slender novel that contains multitudes. It is a work of great ambition, beautifully executed, a worthy successor to the brilliant Outline, and a harbinger of great hope for the third and final installment—soon may it arrive.

The New York Times Book Review - Monica Ali

…transfixing…[Faye] was the narrator of Ms. Cusk's previous novel, Outline (2015). These two short books are part of a projected trilogy, and together they're already a serious achievement: dense, aphoristic, philosophically acute novels that read like Iris Murdoch thrice distilled…[Cusk's] writing offers the iron-rich pleasures of voice instead of style. Each sentence is drilled down, as with an auger…Transit is fat with substance, as August Wilson once said he wanted his plays to be. There's a lot of humor in its talk.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

★ 10/24/2016
Cusk’s outstanding latest, the second in a trilogy, works as both a companion piece to the superb Outline and as an independent narrative, following Faye, a writer and teacher, who moves to London with her two young sons after a divorce. As in Outline, Faye’s arc is less about plotted action and is more a series of vignettes, focused this time on long conversations about the ways we journey through life. During these chats, her hairdresser reveals his confrontation with fear and being unwanted one New Year’s Eve, and an author, while speaking on a panel with Faye at a literary festival, talks about the fame he has received by revealing personal stories. A construction worker soundproofing her floors talks with Faye about architecture and broken families, and a potential student discusses her obsession with an obscure painter, and how her love for him sprung from the ashes of a failed attempted affair. As always, Cusk’s ear for language and dialogue is sharp; her characters speak about universal ideas, such as anxiety and lust. This marvelous novel continues the author’s vivid exploration of the human condition. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

A work of stunning beauty, deep insight, and great originality . . . Transit is a slender novel that contains multitudes. It is a work of great ambition, beautifully executed, a worthy successor of the brilliant Outline.” —Monica Ali, The New York Times Book Review

“Transfixing . . . A serious achievement . . . [Cusk's] writing offers the iron-rich pleasures of voice instead of style. Each sentence is drilled down, as with an auger . . . This writer never has to recover her aplomb because she never loses it.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“A reading journey you wish didn't have to end . . . Cusk gives us engrossing, probing conversations . . . Her prose is exquisitely precise . . . With its resonant comparisons between life and art (including literature) and its enjoyably varied, more tightly structured series of vignettes, Transit fills in the ‘sketched-out form’ Cusk introduced in Outline. Her narrator's ongoing odyssey toward finding her bearings in her new life is a journey worth following.” —Heller McAlpin, NPR

“Alienating yet intimate, dreamlike yet grounded, slim yet substantial, delicate but fierce, Cusk’s writing feels, exhilaratingly, unlike any other fiction being written these days.” —Emily Donaldson, The Toronto Star

“Rachel Cusk is returning fiction to its roots in storytelling . . . Cusk's goal . . . [is] the establishment of a compelling, dreamlike language and worldview that are utterly her own.” —Jamie Fisher, The Washington Post

“How much should we say, this novel asks, and when should we say it? To whom? In Cusk’s case, a few words are enough to keep readers engrossed, waiting for more.” —Jackie Thomas Kennedy, Minneapolis StarTribune

“Hypnotizing.” —Laird Hunt, Los Angeles Times

“Arresting . . . Condensed, powerful . . . Cusk's technique is reminiscent of filmmaker Richard Linklater, who delights in showing how ordinary people talk to each other as they analyze their shared lives. Talk can have all the drama, suspense, surprise, and plot development of an action scene, but it takes skill to keep the tension high enough to make a scene in which nothing much happens, except for friends trying to manage their children long enough to have a civilized dinner, hit with the force of a car crash.” —Jenny Shank, The Dallas Morning News

“Cusk writes in a cut-glass style that is elegant, austere, and disciplined . . . Yet this cool, balanced style is used to describe the hottest of feelings and the most destabilizing of experiences: moments of transit — getting divorced, renovating a house — the movement from one life to another.” —Anthony Domestico, The Boston Globe

“Cusk’s story-invention powers are so rich that the format feels as fresh the second time around as it did the first. It also hints at Cusk’s extraordinarily precise orchestration of narrative effects.” —Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

“In Transit, the second novel in the series, Cusk hones her new approach, which might be called stream of conversation-ness. She structures her minimalist plot as a jeweler affixes glittering gems in a necklace . . . The experience of reading Transit re-creates, with delicious adult sophistication, that wonderful sensation of being a child, staving off bedtime by requesting tale after tale . . . Cusk at her most brilliant, feminist best.” —Miranda Purves, Elle

“In her effort to expose the illusions of both fiction and life, [Rachel Cusk] may have discovered the most genuine way to write a novel today.” —Ruth Franklin, The Atlantic

“Outstanding . . . As always, Cusk’s ear for language and dialogue is sharp; her characters speak about universal ideas, such as anxiety and lust. This marvelous novel continues the author’s vivid exploration of the human condition.” —Publishers Weekly, boxed, starred review

“Brave and uncompromising in its literary ambition, Transit is a work of cut-glass brilliance that quietly insists on the reader's thoughtful attention. One beautifully crafted sentence follows another.” —Rebecca Abrams, The Financial Times

“Cusk is now working on a level that makes it very surprising that she has not yet won a major literary prize. Her technical originality is equaled by the compelling nature of her subject matter, and Transit is a very fine novel indeed.” —Helen Dunmore, The Observer

“[Transit] is tremendous from its opening sentence . . . Cusk is always an exciting writer: striking and challenging, with a distinctive cool prose voice, and behind that coolness something untamed and full of raw force, even rash . . . she has developed a radically new novel form that works triumphantly . . . Transit steers with stylishness and grace between the low-lying truths and the significant dramas we compose for ourselves out of the accidents which befall us.” —Tessa Hadley, The Guardian

“Transit is an extraordinary piece of writing—stunningly bold, original, and humane.” —Joanna Kavenna, The Daily Telegraph

“Cusk's perspective on the human condition provokes and bewitches.” —Sarah Begley, Time

“Cusk is one of the most lucid, powerful novelists working today, and Transit reflects her ability to make a profound impact with deceptively simple and always elegant prose.” —Nylon

“[Transit] is a delightfully fun read. Cusk knows how to write a great novel, and this one satisfies on many levels . . . she is producing work that is beautifully refined.” —Melissa Katsoulis, The Times (UK)

“Beneath [Transit's] placid surface, themes of displacement and the desire for transformation and authenticity rumble like small, violent earthquakes. It’s also gruesomely funny: the final part, which describes a particularly poncey dinner party, is like something from a horror story. Strange, frightening and brilliant.” —Clare Allfree, The Daily Mail

“Brilliantly written and structured, which is nothing new from this superlatively gifted writer.” —Kirkus Reviews

“With the sparest prose, Cusk has again created an expertly crafted portrait in this distinctive novel about the fear and hope that accompany change, and one woman’s quest to conquer them. A masterful second installment to a promising trilogy.” —Cortney Ophoff, Booklist (starred review)

From the Publisher

09/01/2016
The second book in a projected trilogy (after Outline), this novel subtly explores the multiple definitions of "transit," as its characters are all in transition: moving their physical location, ending or beginning relationships, transforming their homes, or coming to terms with new phases of life. The only through-line that resembles a plot involves the (mostly) unnamed narrator, who has ended her marriage and returned to London after living away for 15 years. She buys a dilapidated flat and starts a major renovation project, over the objections of her extremely hostile neighbors. Otherwise, most of the chapters consist of the stories imparted to the narrator, a writer, by the various people she encounters, including an old flame, her hairdresser, her building contractors, writing students, and dinner party guests. VERDICT The narrator's apparent emotional distance makes her a sounding board for the other characters, who open up and share their lives and struggles. In a way, Cusk is unmasking one way that writers take life and turn it into fiction, and this experiment with the form and definition of the novel make this a recommended purchase where creative writing and contemporary literature collections are strong. [See Prepub Alert, 7/18/16.]—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

Library Journal

2016-10-05
In the second installment of a planned trilogy, Cusk builds on the strengths of Outline (2015) and deepens them by giving her narrator a more human presence.Once again, Cusk’s novel progresses through stories shared with the narrator by various people in her life; their arias of disconnection, fear, and loss swell toward a sorrowful climax that nonetheless contains both humor and hope. But this time, Faye (we actually learn her name, though it’s only used once) is more inclined to respond with musings of her own, more willing to share her history and—at least elliptically—her emotions. Following a divorce, she's moved to London with her two sons, though the crummy state of the council flat she bought necessitates repairs that send the boys to live with their neglectful father for a bit. They make reproachful phone calls while she's appearing at a book festival and visiting a cousin in the countryside, reinforcing her feelings of powerlessness and drift. It’s no accident that the book opens with an email from an astrologer; Faye sardonically notes that it's a computer-generated algorithm, but she pays nonetheless to get a reading about the “major transit…due to occur shortly in [her] sky.” She’s not the only one to feel in the grip of malevolent destiny. From the real estate agent who bemoans his clients’ blindness to “the decree of fate” to the cousin who proclaims that “fate…is only truth in its natural state,” Cusk’s characters disclaim personal responsibility even as they upend their lives. Only Faye seems willing to face up to the consequences of her actions, which is perhaps why she is offered, however tentatively, a chance for new love. Brilliantly written and structured, which is nothing new from this superlatively gifted writer, but with a chastened empathy for human weakness that was absent from her last two novels. Its return is most welcome.

Kirkus Reviews