Second Place by Rachel Cusk

An intimate work of feminist realism that doesn’t pull its punches. Told in the form of letters from its middle-aged, female narrator, M, it considers the terrible savagery of the human ego, and the atrocities it commits against itself and those it is closest to.

Why do we live so painfully in our fictions? Why do we suffer so, from the things we ourselves have invented?

M lives a secluded life with her second husband out on the swamp where he grew up. Scarred by the world and its brutality, she is nevertheless unwilling to detach completely, and so to nurture the sense she craves of being ‘connected’ to the art world, she invites artists in residence into her sanctuary. These visitors stay in ‘the second place’, a neighbouring cottage on their land. When she builds up the courage to invite an artist whose work struck her powerfully at a low point in her life, the impact of his presence unleashes unexpected violences, and forces her to confront some of her own. 

The novel considers the flimsy constructs we call identity, and how we piece together our personal narratives from the detritus of our own fantasies painted over by the assumptions and criticisms of others. It records the intricacies of M’s subjectivity with Tolstoyan exactitude, allowing her generosity and strength of spirit to exist alongside the petty, self-indulgent egoisms that underlie her desperate need to be seen.

The secondary characters too, sway unsettlingly between painfully sympathetic and revoltingly absurd, and the little cast assembled in the oppressive environs of the swamp, provide the raw materials for an unflinching psychodrama with notes of Shakespearean tragicomedy.

Published in 2021, The novel was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction. It’s a potent, powerful text, that catches and holds our gaze in its canvas, and dares us to look away.

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Buy on kindle £5.99 

Paperback from World of Books £10.89

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