I don’t read reviews of book I might read, but I’ve seen some mutterings about this book — well, first of all, that’s it’s not as good as Outline, but then again, very few things are. So I was approaching this with some trepidation.
Front-loading books with the most “difficult” material seems to be a common technique with authors. For instance, I attempted to read Gravity’s Rainbow when I was like 21, and struggled through the first 50 pages before I gave up. Then I tried again a couple years later, and started anew, and it turns out that after the first er 70 pages, the rest of the book is a breeze. Well, comparatively. It’s like the author is going “well, now that the wimps are gone, I’m bringing out the tea and ginger snap cookies”.
This is kinda like that? This is allegedly a novel, but it’s four stories, and the first one is definitely the most abstract one, while the remaining three are totes gripping.
‘s good stuff.
Parade (2024) by Rachel Cusk (buy new, buy used, 3.58 on Goodreads)