Maureen McGranaghan

Also, it seemed strange to me that they wrote these stories but instead of exchanging or reading them aloud in class, they just relate what's in them. That being said, Sylvia's contest with Mimi the dog makes me forget the contrivance. I'm absorbed in it, wondering who will prevail! (Neither?)

Me too.

I agree! Hinterland is a great word.

From a couple days ago, but hmm...still thinking about it. Elena, perhaps because of her beauty, is wary of men, even lovers. She goes on the offensive. Melete has a point. But what's hiding in the hinterland is always cause for concern.

"If a man had a nasty side...She didn't want it roaming unseen in the hinterland of the relationship: she wanted to provoke it... Melete laughed. 'According to that logic...there can be no relationship at all. There can only be people stalking one another.'" #rachelcusktogether

Proust's narrator complains frequently of losing interest in women (and places) when their mystery has gone. The boatman is afflicted by the same problem. I like that the narrator calls him on it! (the "inexorable disenchantment" of knowledge--wonderful phrase; would have taken Proust a paragraph!)

I feel like the conventional wisdom is to take the plunge, whatever it is, such that I feel ashamed when I don't, so I, too, am struck by this idea of such advice emanating from people who have no intention of doing any such thing themselves.

Christos' story is my favorite...his phobia of dancing cured by 50s garb and the Lindy Hop. "I found myself not falling but flying, flying up and up, around and around, so fast and so high that I seemed to fly clear even of my body itself." #RachelCuskTogether

Earthly Possessions and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant have stayed with me as well. And she wrote many I've never read.

Fantastic line. Not sure how it would work with all fears, but interesting to contemplate.

I read those Anny Tyler books so long ago (though not Breathing Lessons); they made an impression. I remember the siblings in The Accidental Tourist had their own card game none of the spouses could figure out. I loved that.

I couldn't pull onto the road with my parking lot downtown because a flock of Canadian geese was milling about there. Not crossing, even. Just hanging out in the road. I had to honk, at which they mustered some kind of collective agenda and waddled out of the way, not with any urgency.

The faithless husband belting Carmen in the shower. 🤣 Gotta love it (unless you're the wife). #rachelcusktogether

I was surprised when the narrator said she liked Angeliki at the end of ch. 5. She seemed to be presented as insufferable, dominating the conversation and the ordering of the food (then eating so little of it). But I realized it was partly Paniotis' attitude I was reacting to. #rachelcusktogether

After reading Outline the second time, I described this episode to a friend in order to illustrate what I found compelling about the book. At the end of describing it, I found there was nothing to say. It is only itself.

"That time spent swimming in the waterfall belongs nowhere: it is part of no sequence of events, it is only itself..." A spontaneous swim, intense and refreshing, after Paniotis and his children's harrowing experience. This has stayed with me. #rachelcusktogether

Heavy statement, given that her own marriage is ending. I feel we are getting hints of the disorientation this is causing her.

"I replied that I wasn't sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you actually were, or indeed to separate what you were from what you had become through the other person. I thought the whole idea of a 'real' self might be illusory..."
#rachelcusktogether

Why should she be punished for her immersion/unawareness that day? I think she feels like she's being punished--i.e. she is suffering--and it's giving rise to this idea (among others). Her sons' constant conflict could very well be a symptom, too, of the protracted breakup of this family.

exhausted and dislocated the narrator herself is, apparently by what she is going through in her own life, namely the breakup of her marriage, which seems to be dying (to have died) a slow and excruciating death. There are other hints of it--and I think this is one of those.

I woke up still thinking of this passage. Paniotis is "aghast" at her conception (says only a Catholic could come up with it), even though she seems to be lamenting that she didn't realize what he was feeling, and I think I agree with him. One thing that occurs to me this time through is how...

I questioned this. I guess she means immersion as the opposite of transcendence? Heedlessness is one thing, but being yourself with your family, without the edge of awareness that so often afflicts us, seems like the present-ness I am often yearning for. #rachelcusktogether

I bought this for my dad one year--after we read and loved The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (fantastic book!). When I visit him I always mean to read Shepherd and then somehow the time passes and I don't. But I will seek it out now!

He's very bitter about it, but what was the communication? How he handled it really matters. He had the best of intentions and seems to think that should have sufficed for everyone. But at the same time he was running a business. #rachelcusktogether

I feel rather ambivalent about Paniotis' account of his publishing downfall. It sounds as though he was not able to meet his contractual obligations for (advance) payments, in which case I can't blame the writers for being upset. It's not just the money but the trust. #rachelcusktogether

I love this line. You don't often find those people in a crowd. They are elsewhere doing their own thing. Living quietly, perhaps.

I read a lot of Byatt a while back, but that one I discovered only recently--an early novel, maybe her second, even. She wrote better ones later, building on some of its subjects and themes. But the sister who got stuck in that imaginary world did hold a chilling fascination for me.

Interesting to think about for siblings--those close in age. One of the variations on the theme of closeness/contention.

I would have been terrified climbing the ladder too. I think I might have had to spend the night in the cemetery. :(

I like her reading of the scene in Wuthering Heights too, the "fatal...subjectivity" of Catherine and Heathcliff's perception of the Lintons. No one, arguably, sees what's really there (whatever that means). Even the people in the scene perceive it subjectively. #rachelcusktogether