The second in Rachel Cusk’s trilogy is TRANSIT (Faber and Faber 2016). As with OUTLINE, Cusk delivers sparse yet pinpoint detail prose that explores themes including childhood, loss, moving on, change, moral responsibility, vulnerability and power.
The narrator’s family has dissolved and she and her two young sons relocate to London. The title references the many transitions she faces – personal, artistic and practical – as she tries to establish a new life for her (new) family. Every character that appears is painted with precision, wit, familiarity and a non-sentimental viewpoint. Her description of character is such that the reader has confidence they would recognise the person described if they saw them in the street.
Her children’s necessary adaptations to their new life, along with the renovation of her apartment (which her builder denotes as ‘trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’) throw up plenty of troubles along the way. The restoration, particularly, is a thread sown throughout the novel, as she deals with the builders, the neighbours and the downstairs owners who are not happy with all the noise. The wise and pragmatic builder’s comments are often truisms with unexpected depth and meaning – he makes observations and he remarks on the things he sees and hears, and what he makes of them.
Each chapter could be a contained short story, and the sum of the whole ensures this novel is much more than linked stories. Captivating, entertaining, sharply observed and thought-provoking.