“Outline is startlingly unique. A future classic. Cusk offers a boundless volley of unchartered truths of the human psyche. She is jarring, visceral, wise. Outline refuses to pander to expectation, resulting in a stubborn, sideways type of literary perfection.” Grace Dent, Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015 judge.
A woman writer goes to Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Though her own circumstances remain indistinct, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives, as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives.
Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voices begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.
Laline Paull
Kamila Shamsie
Ali Smith
Anne Tyler
Sarah Waters
PP Wong
Sara Taylor
Rachel Seiffert
Marie Phillips
Sandra Newman
Emily St. John Mandel
Emma Healey
Samantha Harvey
Xiaolu Guo
Patricia Ferguson
Lissa Evans
Laline Paull
Kamila Shamsie
Ali Smith
Anne Tyler
Sarah Waters
Heather O'Neill
Barbara Kingsolver
Ruth Ozeki
Susanna Clarke
Maggie O'Farrell
Tayari Jones
Kamila Shamsie
Naomi Alderman
Lisa McInerney
Ali Smith
Eimear McBride
A.M. Homes
Madeline Miller
Téa Obreht
Barbara Kingsolver
Marilynne Robinson
Rose Tremain
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Lionel Shriver
Andrea Levy
Valerie Martin
Ann Patchett
Kate Grenville
Linda Grant
Suzanne Berne
Carol Shields
Anne Michaels
Helen Dunmore
Tune into host Vick Hope and a line-up of incredible guests on our weekly podcast full of unmissable book recommendations.
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