Home For Fiction – Blog

for thinking people

Patreon LogoPatreon

Rachel Cusk

Review of Rachel Cusk’s Outline

July 21, 2019

This post features another book review, and yet it’s so much more than a review. Writing this review of Rachel Cusk’s Outline is a fantastic opportunity for me to talk about literary fiction. What it should be and what it doesn’t care about.

Often on this blog I talk about over-explaining in fiction, or about realistic characters versus insignificant plots. Rachel Cusk’s Outline is one of the best examples of what high-quality (literary) fiction ought to be.

Review of Rachel Cusk's Outline
Rachel Cusk’s Outline is set in Athens, but not in the way you might expect

Outline is not perfect (we’ll talk about its flaws in a while), but as an example it’s near-flawless. In other words, it’s great teaching material.

(more…)