Thomas Liam

Future group read? One of my favourite books.

This beautiful passage feels like a stylistic aside for Cusk. Atmosphere overlaps structure with near-poetry. It has the luxuriousness of Proust...or being Greece, is it a nod to Durrell?

#RacheCuskTogether

"...paused in an atmosphere of extraordinary pallor and thickness."

Day 14
#RachelCuskTogether

#RachelCuskTogether

"At evening, with the sun no longer overhead, the air developed a kind of viscosity in which time seemed to stand very still and the labyrinth of the city, no longer bisected by light and shade and unstirred by the afternoon breezes, appeared suspended in a kind of dream..."

It seems incredible to me that at the age of sixty-one I am still capable of producing, in all innocence, a completely unrealisable hope.

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Day 13

"There was no longer a shared vision, a shared reality even. Each of them saw things now solely from his own perspective: there was only point of view."

At this point, I feel like this is what the novel(s) are about: perspective, point of view.

This line from today's reading brought me back to that image.

"But everything falls away, try as you might to stop it. And for whatever returns to you, be grateful."

#HenryVIII_2025

Apostle spoons

Henry VIII:
Come, come, my lord, you’d spare your spoons!
(V.2.200)

An expression I was unfamiliar with.

In Tudor and early Stuart England, Apostle Spoons (ornate silver spoons with a small figure of one of the twelve apostles on the handle) were traditional christening gifts from godparents.

The editing of her writing deserves a tribute, too.

Such beautifully constructed writing.

#RachelCuskTogether

Day 12 (Caught up!)

"Yet this impulse, this desire to be free, was still compelling to me: I still, somehow, believed in it despite having proved that everything about it was illusory."

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Day 11

"I was surprised to find myself not especially sure-footed in this exercise."

When we're done with these books, will we all see the literal and metaphorical coexist everywhere we go?

#HenryVIII_2025

Cromwell:
My Lord of Winchester, you are a little,
By your good favour, too sharp; men so noble,
However faulty, yet should find respect
For what they have been: 'tis a cruelty
To load a falling man.

(V.2.107-111) - Arden 3rd

#RachelCuskTogether

Day 10

"I said that I didn't believe people could change so completely, could evolve an unrecognisable morality; it was merely that that part of themselves had lain dormant, waiting to be evoked by circumstances."

Yes, and pathetic. But we haven't entered his interiority. We only see his performance of himself so far.

Aphoristic lines like this are typically signposts offering clear insight into the worldview of the author or protagonist. We’re conditioned to treat them as miniature truths, endorsed by the author. But Cusk deliberately unsettles that expectation. The protagonist isn't proclaiming; just listening.

Is it a kind of “myth” of domestic family life? Unattained. Are they museum pieces of some past/alternate identity?

#RachelCuskTogether

Day 9

"The bunk beds, in other words, stood for the concept of children generally rather than for any child specifically."

I'm fascinated by this sentence—a casual little drip-drop of semiotics in our story. Signifier and signified. What's she trying to tell us?

Yes. The second-to-last line in the chapter is so good.

"I kept looking for something else, a clue, something rotting or breeding, a layer of mystery or chaos or shame, but I didn't find it."

It can be somewhat disconcerting. So many of the characteristics, quirks, faults, imperfections, mistakes she reveals, I see shadows of in myself. Only excellent and subtle writing can do this.

And it's such an elegant phrase - poetic but precise.

I love this. She takes this seemingly obvious, heavy-handed metaphor and makes it brilliant, ironic. Flips it on Ryan - his symbol of change becomes a symbol of Sisyphian stagnation.

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Day 8

"As he spoke I saw the imaginary staircase rising in front of him once more, stretching out of sight; and him climbing it with a book suspended tantalisingly ahead of him."

And this self-preservation habit is echoed by his taking the seat against the wall.

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Day 7

"I suppose it's a bit like a marriage, he said. You build a whole structure on a period of intensity that's never repeated."

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Day 6

"...and though he might have seen the Parthenon sitting like a gold and white crumbling crown on the hilltop with the fierce pagan blue of the sky behind, he wouldn't have felt it, as he was able to feel it this morning, airing the shaded crevices of his being."

I'm down! A slow read is precisely what his books need.

#HenryVIII_2025

King Henry VIII:
Your enemies are many, and not small; their practises
Must bear the same proportion

(V.1.161-162)

I've read Satantango and Melancholy of Resistance. He can be a tough grind to read but worth the effort, IMO.