Rachel Cusk’s 12th novel, Parade, is classic Cusk-ery. In this experimental novel, sans plot, the narrative steps between interlinked observations about different artists; all named G, some male, some female, some recognisably famous. The reader glimpses into windows of characters, in muted and dissociative prose that sometimes slips into a separate first-person narrative.
This is a patchwork collection of lives, tracing the seams of common understanding shared by a certain kind of artist. As ever, Cusk’s vision mainly focuses upon white, heterosexual European figures in anonymous places, which become intentionally flattened through lack of detail. Cusk’s quiet meditations on the self are beautifully worded, but can occasionally feel blank in their epiphanies.
The gender essentialism that Cusk implies is sometimes disquieting. This binary seems to be the ultimate glue that binds the narrative, considering the difficulties faced by women versus men as they become artists and mothers. Cusk considers the narratives that artists construct to justify their own choices. Men feature as lodestars or as monstrous oppressors.
Her female characters wish to embody the same fearful masculinity, feeling fragmented in their work as
artist-mothers, wedded to fantasies of different imagined lives. Cusk ultimately questions whether it is truly possible to be a female artist in the world. But this doubt feels curious on closer inspection – given the various female artists dissected in the body of her text. And yet, this remains a deeply engrossing book.
As ever, Cusk’s writing is captivating in its understatement. Her attention to the act of living is something to wonder at.
Parade by Rachel Cusk is out now (Faber & Faber, £14.99). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.
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