Rachel Cusk is an author some British reviewers love to hate. Take her new book for example, one reviewer at the Times derided the author as “one of our truly world-class misérables”, trivialising and reviling what she calls “a plotless, introspective book about how hard it is to be Rachel Cusk”.
Leaving aside the conflation of the author with her many different and notably self-effacing narrators, the reviewer’s impatience betrays a demand for ideological and formal conformity. Why, she implies, can’t Cusk just write happily about the things – marriage, children – women should be happy about?
Parade is a searching book written against conformity. It is an exploration of the role of gender in the genesis and reception of art – a novel in which selfhood, creativity and family relations are submitted to unflinching analytical scrutiny.
