Opening line: “An astrologer emailed me to say she has important news for me concerning events in my immediate future”
Finding Rachel Cusk has been one of the high- notes of this otherwise devastating year. The world is holding its breath through a pandemic, Transit, with it disarming quietness provided a momentary refuge. Its gaze lingers- on me, you, and even the downstairs neighbour who slut shames the hell out of our narrator.
This might also be a case of finding the right book at the exact right moment. There is a scene in the second half of the book set around a first date, a woman declares at the start of the date that she is not in the right heart space to engage in the cautious dance of expectations. But we see the night going well from that point on, she is wayfinding through that uncertainty and somewhere along there she wants the night to keep going.
This book is all those conversations in our life that we wish hadn’t ended. Every page of it points to all the ways in which all of us are so helplessly similar.
Five glorious stars.