Second Place
Rachel Cusk
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars
3.75
· 24 ratings · 192 pages · Published: 09 May 2021
When historical catastrophe upends daily life, M's daughter returns to the marsh, along with her prim, privileged boyfriend. The painter arrives, too, accompanied by a lithe, cosmopolitan lover. Resigned to the perilous indoors, fissures form within the strange group. The painter's quietly demonic presence wreaks havoc with M, plunging her into existential disarray. As secrets, alliances and private desires come to light, she is forced to choose between her deepest impulses: to comply or to rebel completely.
Like her acclaimed Outline trilogy, Rachel Cusk's Second Place transcends its form. Inspired by Lorenzo in Taos, Mabel Dodge Luhan's 1932 memoir of the writer D. H. Lawrence's fraught visit to her communal property, the novel hovers between past and present, Gothic and contemporary, fable and truth--continuing to haunt us long after we've looked away.
Tagged as:
- contemporary 3
- literary fiction 3
- drama 2
- psychological 2
- family 2
- historical fiction 1
- epistolary 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- audiobook 3
- book 1
- adult fiction 1