Transit
Rachel Cusk
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Transit is the second in a loose trilogy of novels by Canadian-British author Rachel Cusk. The story is told by Faye, a writer who returns to London with her children after the breakdown of her marriage. The novel is based less around a conventional plot so much as a series of everyday events. Casual observations and interactions lead to startling insights about relationships and human nature. Faye remains mysterious while recounting, in detailed indirect speech, conversations with ex-lovers, family members, hairdressers, builders and others.
Cusk’s approach to storytelling is, at first, refreshing. Her hazy prose has a hypnotic effect on the reader, and the sections of Transit that centre on the renovation of Faye’s dilapidated flat prove particularly compelling. However, as the book proceeds, its incidental quality begins to feel increasingly directionless – the passages end up seeming more like standalone short works than parts of a longer narrative. Faye’s secondhand philosophising starts to grate by the end, all the more given that Cusk wrote the trilogy’s first volume, Outline, in much the same reported style.
This is not to say that Transit does not make for an interesting or thought-provoking read. However, there are times, surely, when a processed, pre-packaged sandwich is just a processed, pre-packaged sandwich, and not cause for ruminating on life, the universe and everything else.
Words – Stephen Cox
