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Henk's Reviews > Second Place
Second Place
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by
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021! - https://thebookerprizes.com/fiction/2021
Beautiful prose about a woman not really living her life, being in a seemingly perpetual second place
The truth was that I questioned the value of my love - I wasn’t sure how much benefit it could be to anybody.
Who is the devil at the start in the train and what happens there in Second Place? Sometimes I felt dropped into the middle of a rather opaque, if short tale about a slightly older woman (at least that was the vibe I got from the usage of explanation marks) narrating a visit of an artist to her home in an isolated march.
Not much real life details are given, despite some allusions to a world wide event (aka the pandemic) making travel harder. Still many real issues, including misogyny, dependency, regret and entitlement take an important role in this book.
The narrator has a daughter with a peculiar son-in-law, and an overbearing husband Tony who she seems to have overly submissive, deferrent feelings toward.
The rudeness towards the main character and her lack of self-confidence is woven in slowly, but quite brutally by Rachel Cusk, up until the point that she ponders that she doesn’t want her husband to take a dog since he might love it more than her.
It's a quite sad tale overall, including a rather deux ex machina event in respect to her guest. However if I don't sound enthusiastic, that's not entirely reflective of the reading experience (which I'd place at around 3.5 stars). The language usage of Cusk is brilliant and she is acutely observant.
I've ordered Outline and look forward to see more of her language pyrotechnics!
Quotes:
He doesn’t comment and he doesn’t criticize and this puts him in an ocean of silence compared to most people. Sometimes his silence makes me feel invisible, not to him but to myself, because as I’ve told you I’ve been criticized all my life: it’s how I’ve come to know that I’m there.
Change is also a loss, and in a sense a parent cab lose a child every day, until you realize that you’d better stop predicting what they’re going to become and concentrate on what is right in front of you.
Being with him in a particular time and place was the very opposite of being with other people: it was as if everything had either already happened or was going to happen afterwards.
I wanted him to be more than he was, or to be myself somehow less than I was, and because I wanted those things my will was aroused - in any case, there was the feeling of some unknown lying between us that awoke a dangerous part of me, the part that felt it hadn’t truly lived.
It’s all so silly, he said softly, half to himself. You get tired of reality, and then you discover it’s already gotten tired of you. We should try to stay real, he said, smiling that awful smile again.
Some people write simply because they don’t know how to live in the moment, I said, and have to reconstruct it and live in it afterwards.
It almost felt like the less I had to worry about, the sadder I became.
Only tyrants want power for its own sake, and parenthood is the closest most people get to an opportunity for tyranny.
I told her she would always be able to find a white man to be obliterated by, if that was what she decided she wanted.
Beautiful prose about a woman not really living her life, being in a seemingly perpetual second place
The truth was that I questioned the value of my love - I wasn’t sure how much benefit it could be to anybody.
Who is the devil at the start in the train and what happens there in Second Place? Sometimes I felt dropped into the middle of a rather opaque, if short tale about a slightly older woman (at least that was the vibe I got from the usage of explanation marks) narrating a visit of an artist to her home in an isolated march.
Not much real life details are given, despite some allusions to a world wide event (aka the pandemic) making travel harder. Still many real issues, including misogyny, dependency, regret and entitlement take an important role in this book.
The narrator has a daughter with a peculiar son-in-law, and an overbearing husband Tony who she seems to have overly submissive, deferrent feelings toward.
The rudeness towards the main character and her lack of self-confidence is woven in slowly, but quite brutally by Rachel Cusk, up until the point that she ponders that she doesn’t want her husband to take a dog since he might love it more than her.
It's a quite sad tale overall, including a rather deux ex machina event in respect to her guest. However if I don't sound enthusiastic, that's not entirely reflective of the reading experience (which I'd place at around 3.5 stars). The language usage of Cusk is brilliant and she is acutely observant.
I've ordered Outline and look forward to see more of her language pyrotechnics!
Quotes:
He doesn’t comment and he doesn’t criticize and this puts him in an ocean of silence compared to most people. Sometimes his silence makes me feel invisible, not to him but to myself, because as I’ve told you I’ve been criticized all my life: it’s how I’ve come to know that I’m there.
Change is also a loss, and in a sense a parent cab lose a child every day, until you realize that you’d better stop predicting what they’re going to become and concentrate on what is right in front of you.
Being with him in a particular time and place was the very opposite of being with other people: it was as if everything had either already happened or was going to happen afterwards.
I wanted him to be more than he was, or to be myself somehow less than I was, and because I wanted those things my will was aroused - in any case, there was the feeling of some unknown lying between us that awoke a dangerous part of me, the part that felt it hadn’t truly lived.
It’s all so silly, he said softly, half to himself. You get tired of reality, and then you discover it’s already gotten tired of you. We should try to stay real, he said, smiling that awful smile again.
Some people write simply because they don’t know how to live in the moment, I said, and have to reconstruct it and live in it afterwards.
It almost felt like the less I had to worry about, the sadder I became.
Only tyrants want power for its own sake, and parenthood is the closest most people get to an opportunity for tyranny.
I told her she would always be able to find a white man to be obliterated by, if that was what she decided she wanted.
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by
Henk
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rated it 3 stars
Jun 03, 2021 02:58AM
I know right! It reminded me of a Rothko but its a painting by Ilse D'Hollander
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The exclamation marks! Were! Everywhere!
It really does give a picture of the narrator, at least that was my experience, don’t you agree?
it was admittedly a little jarring/ felt slightly contrived but I thought it did work work well. To me the exclamation marks reinforced this whole thing that she has never and will never be able to exist outside of power dynamic between her and Jeffers (or her and anyone); the exclamative reaches out for a response from the reader to also be surprised, and so we know the narrator will continue to intervene with fate...
Yes, I agree…. I have spent a lot of time pondering who the devil was at the beginning, and I think I’ve concluded it is the root cause of the narrator’s internal struggles that clash against L
Nice review, Henk. I am yet to read the author :)
Thanks for the kind words!
