tl;dr

Kudos brilliantly caps a magnificent trilogy.  Read them all.  Now.

opening remarks

Kudos is the third book in a trilogy that began with Outline (2014) and Transit (2016).  Those books were brilliant, and I’m expecting much the same from this one, so no pressure Rachel Cusk.

knee-jerk observations

Outline also began with Faye meeting, or observing, a man on a plane.

And again like Outline, and for that matter Transit, the man sitting next to Faye tells her all about his life.
As was the case in the previous books, Faye elicits these wonderful, intimate stories from the people she meets.  In this case, the man is on his way to see his daughter, Betsy, play the oboe.  We discover that the man has always worried about his daughter, believed there was something wrong with her, and yet her skill with the instrument fills him with deep joy.
The man’s story isn’t entirely about Betsy, in fact, the original subject of conversation was the family dog Pilot, and the discovery that the dog has cancer.  The night before the man sat with Pilot waiting for the dog to die and grown impatient when the process took longer than expected.  The man’s tale, which began as an explanation of why he keeps nodding off on the plane, becomes this brilliant meditation on death and guilt.

Faye arrives at the conference she’s attending where she meets her publisher at the bar who notices that Faye’s author photograph doesn’t reflect her face now. 

What a magnificent description.
Oh, the cynicism.
I wonder if my blog can be found in the “lower depths of the internet.”
In this chapter Faye – I keep using her name, though at this point it’s not been mentioned – meets her interviewer.  They talk about the first time they met, how Faye was envious of the interviewer’s perfect life: her husband and children.  The conversation then unfolds into a discussion about marriage, about jealousy and about feminism.
Hermann, the son of the woman who organised the conference, guides Faye to a party.  Along the way they discuss, amongst other things, the idea of gender as a bulwark of evil and the old-fashioned tradition of handing out a male and female award for excellence – a topic that introduces the novel’s title.
This is the truth:
Here we have a subtle… well, maybe not that subtle… dig at those that criticised Cusk for her honesty about motherhood in her 2003 memoir, A Life’s Work.  That’s not to say the sentiment isn’t true.
If there’s a constant theme to the conversations Faye has with people on planes, tour guides and pretentious authors and publishers, it’s parenthood and marriage.
This is so sad, and not just because Luis son dislikes reading books.
Unsurprisingly, given Faye is at a writer’s conference, there’s quite a bit about the state of literature, both the quality of work and the size of the audience.  In both instances, no-one Faye chats to seems particularly upbeat.
I do love that Cusk is a writer who still uses the word “presently” as if it were still in fashion.

I can appreciate the pressure on a critic not to be hyper-negative, especially when you have aspirations to write fiction or poetry.  I, personally, can be as rude as I want on my little blog because I have no designs on becoming a writer.

Cusk has a cheeky sense of humour as evidenced by the running gag of Faye’s three interviews where she’s never asked a question (the interviewer more interested in their own story).

Feminism (empowerment and equality), marriage (together or apart) and children (having and not having them) are topics that appear regularly, and not only when Faye is conversing with women.

The Gist Of It

There is so much that is profound, witty, sharply observed and astute about Rachel Cusk’s Kudos, the third and final novel in a very loose trilogy (which I like to call the Adventures of Faye).  It took a great deal of discipline on my part – and the possible threat of legal action – not to cut and paste the bulk of the novel in the comments above.  I’m not sure if Kudos is my favourite of the three books by Cusk, (Outline just blew me away, and Transit is spectacular) but taken as a whole these three novels should be marked as the first genuine classics of the 21st Century.  Yes, a tad hyperbolic on my part, I can’t help myself, I’m that damn excited.  If I were the sort of guy who reread books I’d be straight back to Outline, just to savour it all again.

What’s hilarious about Kudos, (and the other two) is that they are, for the most part, entirely plotless.  Faye travels to a writers conference in Europe – Germany, I think – and that’s it, that’s the story.  No-one gets murdered at the conference; aliens don’t invade; Faye doesn’t have an affair with a local.  There’s a distinct lack of suspense or mystery or adventure.  The drama stems from Faye’s interaction with others.

As with the previous two books, Kudos is, ostensibly, a short story collection masquerading as a novel.  Each chapter, for the most part, features Faye having a deep and meaningful with another person – a man on a plane, her European publisher, a fellow author, the journalists who have been tasked to interview Faye but would rather speak about themselves.  Each of these intimate moments is dramatic and compelling even if all that ties them together is the setting and the person listening to their tale.

As I mentioned above most of the stories Faye encounters deal with the family unit in some way, most regularly a troubled or broken marriage.  And often centre to that discussion is the role of the empowered and independent women, especially about having children (which I know is a significant issue for Cusk).  As a bloke it’s eye-opening, fascinating stuff, offering up different flavours of feminism.  I’m not doing these conversations justice which is why you need to read Kudos but before that Outline and Transit.

I already envy you.

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