OUTLINE: RACHEL CUSK

One of the New York Times Ten Best Books for 2015, Cusk's OUTLINE, an unconventional narrative, is told from the point of view of a writing teacher spending a week in Athens, Greece, teaching Greeks how to write.  The book, however, is much more about the people she meets, the students she teaches, and the friends she has made on previous trips to Athen.  In fact, we learn little about the narrator other than what we glean from the stories told by her acquaintances.  She remains distant, enigmatic, empathetic, as she draws out the lives of others.

We do learn that she has two children, one calling during a class because he has lost his way to school.  She patiently explains how to find it. And we know that she is a struggling writer, somewhat at a loss, hoping to find out who she really is. Many of the stories are told by women, often at odds with their society, their husbands, their lives, too often shaped by men. The narrator meets a Greek, thrice divorced, on the plane into Athens and meets with him twice, calling him my neighbor.  He tells her a thorough but often dishonest description of his life, his marriages and children but what he really seems to have in mind is to seduce the narrator.  We also meet another teacher, a male, who has come to Athens, mostly because his wife often goes off with her girlfriends.  We also meet a Greek friend, a failed writer and editor, and two of his friends, a striking young women who enjoys upsetting people with her frankness, and her Lesbian poet friend, who has recently been discovered. They tell their stories, the narrator rarely comments, and we slowly distinguish the outlines of their lives, the center void.

We also listen to her ten students tell the story of their lives, then stories that they have written for class, again outlining their lives.  The book ends with the narrator leaving for Great Britain but not before the next occupant of the apartment, also a writing teacher, tells her story.  We could almost say the book is a series of short stories if it were not for the fact that the common thread is the narrator.  I did not love this book. It needs to be read slowly, thoughtfully, and I, for some reason, seemed to be in a hurry.  It would be a fun book to teach, to work through slowly with a group of students.