Outline

Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner. She goes swimming with an elderly Greek bachelor. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies anxieties pet theories regrets and longings. And through these disclosures a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss. Outline is Rachel Cusks finest work yet and one of the most startling brilliant and original novels of recent years.