Rachel Cusk: Contemporary Critical Perspectives

(Hardback)

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A critically acclaimed and controversial contemporary British author, Rachel Cusk's work offers a striking representation of trends in modern writing through her rejection of the conventional trappings of realism and her pushing the limits between fiction and life writing. Rachel Cusk: Contemporary Critical Pesrpectives is a critical guide to Cusk's broad oeuvre, covering such novels as Saving Agnes, A Country Life, and Second Place among others; her 'autofictional' Outline trilogy; and her nonfiction works such as A Life's Work, The Last Supper, Aftermath and the Coventry essays. Substantial and wide-ranging, this book provides an accessible and lucid introduction to Cusk's work, exploring such themes as gender relations, class dynamics, maternal identity, personal and creative freedom, and calls upon critical fields from gender studies to biographical writing studies. The book then rounds off with an in-depth interview with Rachel Cusk herself about her writing and experiences. Mapping the formal and stylistic shift across her career and locating them within their specific contexts, this collection provides a crucial analysis of Cusk's influences, politics, and literary techniques that speak to many of the most pressing issues in contemporary literature.

Reviews

Rachel Cusk is one of the most experimental, critically acclaimed and controversial contemporary British female authors, and this collection is a lucid, accessible and wide-ranging introduction to her work. * Jeannette Baxter, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature, Anglia Ruskin University, UK *

Author Bio

Roberta Garrett is Senior lecturer on the Creative Writing programme and the Media Foundation programme in the Department of Arts and Cultural Industries at the University of East London, UK. She has published widely on representations of gender, class and race in popular literature and film. She is the author of Postmodern Chick-Flicks: the Return of the Womans Film (2008) and Writing the Modern Family: Contemporary Literature, Motherhood and Neoliberal Culture (2021) and co-editor of We Need to Talk About Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, the Family and Popular Culture (2016). Liam Harrison is Associate Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, UK, and a founding editor of the literary journal Tolka. He is a graduate representative for the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies, and a managing editor of the academic journal Alluvium. He is also a co-founder of the Contemporary Irish Literature Research Network.