Faye, a writer, meets a journalist who will be interviewing her on a park bench. They’ve met previously, years before. The journalist’s story of her quaint marriage stayed with Faye all this time—Faye admits she felt something like envy.
The journalist confesses that she intentionally cultivated an enviable version of her marriage for Faye, then shares what she believes to be the actual, much darker narrative.
Faye responds that the revised narrative only proves the journalist is a person who creates certain types of narratives out of her life, which says less about her life than it does about her talents as a writer for crafting narratives.
Then the journalist says she already drafted her new piece on Faye before this meeting, which wasn’t necessary.
This is how things go in Kudos, the final novel in Rachel Cusk’s trilogy, now out in paperback. In every direction the ground is thoroughly excavated, yet afterward nothing new can be built.
Like Outline and Transit, Kudos is a series of lengthy conversations, which are often more like monologues performed for Faye’s benefit. Of the many conversations in Kudos, four are scheduled interviews with journalists. There is a dark humor in the way these unfold—three books in, we suspect that in at least one meeting, Faye will not be asked to say a single word, and if she does speak, it will be in a conversation that is sexist, framed in a way that has nothing to do with her, or both. Even in an interview.
But we are never told how Faye feels. Seismic events in Faye’s life are mentioned in passing, usually by other characters. In some encounters it seems there is something about her that encourages people to open up, whether or not they know her. Others seem content to railroad her just because she’s there, either not caring or not grasping how she gently feeds them just enough conversational rope to hang themselves.
Rachel Cusk is now a writer who changes writers the way Joan Didion or James Baldwin might. She can be felt just over the shoulder, staring coolly at the laptop screen, not saying a word, until the writer deletes the new sentence and tries again. PLEASE READ
