The third and last in this trilogy, whose covers I have unfailingly adored, reverts to the pattern of the first, Outline. The narrator is once again traveling alone, encountering strangers or near-strangers who share with her (often with very little provocation) a range of experiences and observations - everything from trivial anecdotes to searching, revelatory narratives. This pattern (and its attendant tone of detachment) doesn't sit right with some of the readers I've talked to, but those who like it tend to love it.

The setting of a literary festivals made me want to read more fiction set in the weird, weird world of professional conferences. Cusk does an excellent job evoking their claustrophobic and lonely-yet-never-alone ambiance. What else is out there?

The third in Cusk’s brilliant trilogy – after “Outline” and “Transit”, this book is again narrated by Faye (named only once in each book) using Cusk’s “annihilated perspective” technique where what we learn of Faye is mainly through her one-sided conversations with those she meets who unburden themselves upon her.

This book continues the progression of the first two volumes – there is an increasing concentration on the world of literature, as well as on the narrator’s relationship with her son (ironically the only person who accuses her of not listening) as well as a topical but less successful digression into Brexit.

Overall this is a worth conclusion to a wonderful series of books – best read back to back as a single story.

I’m in love with everything that Rachel Cusk has written so this is a honest but not an unbiased view, I’m afraid... Her prose is crystalline and clean cut as ever in this book, so is its philosophical depth. I hate its characters but I feel for them and they will stay with for all his failures and complexities.

I gave up on this after reading about 15%. It just didn't interest me enough to keep reading. I know people love Cusk, but this just didn't work for me.

My five star rating is more for the entire trilogy as a whole, for after reading the three volumes back-to-back-to-back, I really consider it to be one book, since there are few distinguishing characteristics for the separate volumes. But this book, like Outline, is really more of a 4 star - I was slightly disappointed that there WAS no real epiphany - or even much of a conclusion - at the end, but then realized that would somewhat have defeated the purpose of the books' 'annihilated perspective'.

This volume, like parts of Transit, revolves around two literary festival/conferences that anti-protagonist Faye attends as a semi-celebrated author, and since my knowledge of such (and European geography in general) is negligible at best, it wasn't until after finishing the book, and reading the very fine reviews by my GR chums Meike and Paul, that I deciphered they were meant to be in Cologne and Lisbon. Many of the characters Faye encounters also appear to be based in reality - yet again those passed right over my head.

What I DID get - and appreciate - is how Cusk circles around (and around and around) her themes of identify, gender politics, family dynamics, life philosophies, etc. in a highly entertaining, and sometimes, enlightening fashion. Another GR pal, Jonathan, contends that Cusk is neither as clever or profound as she thinks she is (even comparing her works to - quelle horreur! - chick-lit!), but I think many of her observations - if not quite life-changing - were things that did make me stop and ponder life's bigger questions.

In conclusion, never having read any of Cusk's novels or autobiographical writings (and not so sure these left me crying out to do so), I can't say how these fit within her oeuvre - but the fact I was able to get through nearly 800 pages of her vignettes in less than 4 days counts for something!

My sincere thanks and gratitude to both Netgalley and FS & G for the generous gift of the ARC prior to publication, in exchange for this honest review.

''Faye', he said fractiously, 'will you just listen?'"

In 1911 the photographer Herbert Ponting joined Captain Scott's, ultimately ill-fated, Terra Nova Expedition, the first professional to join an Antarctic expedition.

He didn't go on to the later, fatal, part of the journey over the ice-fields to the South Pole since, as he explained in his book The Great White South: Traveling with Robert F. Scott's Doomed South Pole Expedition, "there would be nothing to photograph but the level plain of boundless, featureless ice."

And in the photographs he took in in his time there, such as:he had to resort to various ingenious techniques to overcome the challenges the landscape posed.

As Stephen J. Pyne puts it in The Ice: A Journey To Antarctica, 'light was either too brilliant or missing altogether. Foreground and background were difficult to establish, and there was often no horizon on which to organise perspective. The objects, scenes and symbols which normally populated a painting were absent.'

Pyne summarises Ponting's view as needing to counter the fact that the natural landscape 'annihilated perspective'.

103 years later, in 2014, with the publication of Outline, Rachel Cusk instead of trying to counter annihilated perspective, embraced it as an innovative new literary form. The trilogy continued with Transit and is now completed by Kudos.

This new literary style was born out of necessity and as a way of overcoming a dead-end in her work, post Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation.

When Outline was first published, she told The Guardian that she felt fiction was 'fake and embarrassing. Once you have suffered sufficiently, the idea of making up John and Jane and having them do things together seems utterly ridiculous.

Yet my mode of autobiography had come to an end. I could not do it without being misunderstood and making people angry.', referring to the aftermath (pun intended), including the bizarre Mumsnet backlash, to her previous book and in particular the problem that there was so much stuff in my own life that the divide [between life and the book] was completely breached.

She instead suggested Outline's 'annihilated perspective [might be the] beginning of something interesting ... I'm certain autobiography is increasingly the only form in all the arts. Description, character – these are dead or dying in reality as well as in art'.

This all rather reflecting Karl Ove Knausgård's words in A Man in Love “Just the thought of a fabricated character in a fabricated plot made me feel nauseous.”

The previous novels weren't flawless. In Outline, I felt Cusk made what she was doing too explicit at times, as if she didn't trust the reader to get it, and Transit had an story about Faye's ongoing battles with her downstairs neighbours that simply didn't fit.

But they did present a fascinating new development - blending the autobiographical fiction that Knausgård took to one extreme, with the use of reported conversations (with clear debts to Sebald and Bernhard), and an unique narrative distancing of her own, to create an entirely new form, both novels being deservedly recognised by the Goldsmiths Prize for innovative fiction.

There was also a discernable line of development from Outline to Transit, perhaps befitting the respective titles, as the gaps in her narrator Faye's did seem to be slightly filled in, and Transit ended with the hint of a new relationship in the offing.

So to Kudos:

The novel is set around a book tour done by Faye around various cities in Europe, notably Cologne and Lisbon and opens as (a brief introduction aside) did the first novel, with Faye observing and then addressed by her male neighbour on a plane:

'For a while he continued to smile self-consciously , like someone who has mistakenly wandered out onstage, and then, apparently to disguise his feelings of exposure, he turned to me and asked the reason for my trip to Europe. I was a writer, I said, and I was on my way to speak at a literary festival. Immediately his face assumed an expression of polite interest. ‘My wife’s a big reader,’ he said. ‘She belongs to one of those book clubs.’ A silence fell. ‘What kind of thing do you write?’ he said, after a while. I said it was hard to explain.'

Stylistically this felt like a continuation of Transit: Faye (named once of course, in the, rather ironical, quote that opens my review, here from one of her sons) does (sometimes) offer her own views on her interlocutors thoughts , but we learn little about her direct.

We learn for example that she is married, but not from her, but rather from an 'interviewer' who, as happens several times in the novel to comic effect, does all of the talking and mostly about herself:

'‘I think I have everything I need,’ she said. ‘In fact I looked up all the details before I came. It’s what we journalists do nowadays,’ she said. ‘One day they’ll probably replace us with a computer programme. I read that you got married again ,’ she added.'

Faye's very lack of interjection into conversations causes those speaking to reveal more about themselves - but given that their words are reported to us by Faye we, the reader, can also see them as reflecting something on her. Her technique is in direct contrast to the flamboyant society hostess of a literary salon:

'because she didn’t conceal herself the conversation was never real: it was the conversation of people imitating writers having a conversation.'

The publishing world plays a large part in the novel, Faye's German publisher telling her that people want the feeling of having read a worthy literary novel but without the effort:

'What all publishers were looking for, he went on –the holy grail, as it were, of the modern literary scene – were those writers who performed well in the market while maintaining a connection to the values of literature; in other words, who wrote books that people could actually enjoy without feeling in the least demeaned by being seen reading them. He had managed to secure quite a collection of those writers, and apart from the Sudoku and the popular thrillers, they were chiefly responsible for the upswing in the company’s fortunes. I said I was struck by his observation that the preservation of literary values –in however nominal a form –was a factor in the achievement of popular success. In England, I said, people liked to live in old houses that had been thoroughly refurbished with modern conveniences, and I wondered whether the same principle might be applied to novels; and if so, whether the blunting or loss of our own instinct for beauty was responsible for it.'

Cusk also has some fun, using this publisher's words, at the expense of - well Goodreads, Netgalley and Amazon reviewers....

''Sometimes, he said, he amused himself by trawling some of the lower depths of the internet, where readers gave their opinions of their literary purchases, much as they might rate the performance of a detergent. ... It was entertaining, in a way, to see Dante awarded a single star out of a possible five and his "Divine Comedy" described as "complete shit."'

From there she goes to Lisbon, home of jacaranda trees and the pastel de nata:

'The sweet little tart, by which the man’s hungry mouth was fobbed off and occupied, was perhaps nothing less than these women’s divested femininity, separated and handed over, as it were, on a plate; a method of keeping the world at bay as well as a sign, he liked to think, of the happiness of that state, for he didn’t believe that anything created in suffering and self-abnegation could taste quite so delicious.'

In Lisbon, another attendee at the literary conference praises another author there:

'‘Unusually for a man of this nation,’she said, ‘and perhaps for any man, he has been honest about his own life. He has written about his family and his parents and his childhood home in a way that makes them completely recognisable, and because this is a small country he worries he has used them or compromised them, though of course for readers in other parts of the world it is just the honesty itself that comes through.

Though of course if he were a woman,’she said, leaning more confidentially towards my ear, ‘he would be scorned for his honesty, or at the very least no one would care.’'

the last perhaps a cheeky reference to the relative reception of Knausgård's novels vs. Cusk's own?

My favourite of her conversations - or rather received monologues - was with Hermann, a yong guide for the literary tour, highly intelligent and also on the autistic spectrum, and the novel's title comes from his lengthy explanation of an award at his college:

'To return to the subject of the college’s award, he said, the name they had chosen for it was ‘Kudos’. As I was probably aware, the Greek word ‘kudos’ was a singular noun that had become plural by a process of back formation: a kudo on its own had never actually existed, but in modern usage its collective meaning had been altered by the confusing presence of a plural suffix , so that ‘kudos’ therefore meant, literally, ‘prizes’, but in its original form it connoted the broader concept of recognition or acclaim, as well as being suggestive of something which might be falsely claimed by someone else.'

Although literature aside much of the work circles, as does the trilogy around relationships - most of those she meets seem to have undergone messy divorces - and identity, extended here at times to embrace national identity and Brexit. As one of the more perceptive interviewers notes of Faye's work:

'The changing perspectives of identity, he went on, was a subject he sensed I had given some consideration to'

And prompted by someone suggesting that if she moved from England to the better weather in Portugal perhaps her books would be less miserable (!), Faye, relatively unusually, interjects with her own credo, that one can't change one's fate by simply changing location:

'I said I wasn’t sure it mattered where people lived or how, since their individual nature would create its own circumstances: it was a risky kind of presumption, I said, to rewrite your own fate by changing its setting; when it happened to people against their will, the loss of the known world – whatever its features – was catastrophic.'

This in part a reference to the effect of her previous divorce on her son, ending the book on something of a sombre note, although actually much of the book is highly amusing.

So why not 5 stars given what I avow as its importance and innovation as well as its sheer entertainment. Well perhaps the trilogy as a whole does deserve that, but like the first 2 books this one is at times flawed. The parts of the novel that focus on Brexit jarred a little for me: yes there is a link to the theme of identity but the analysis was pretty superficial. And given what seemed a progression from Outline to Transit, I was expecting something more of a development in the concluding part, whereas it style this felt like a copy of Transit. I will be intrigued to read other reviews, particularly from those re-reading the whole trilogy as to whether there are threads running through that I missed.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Thus ends the trilogy that Rachel Cusk began with Outline, continued in Transit. Concludes here. As with the previous two, there is very little action on the part of the narrator. The action arises from the life stories related to her by people encountered on planes, over drinks, in the course of attending a literary festival in Germany in, I think, Cologne. The only glimpse into the writer's own personality is when she admits to being a writer and when asked "of what?" responds ambivalently, saying it's hard to describe. That is the most revealing thing Cusk says about Faye/herself in the pages of all three books put together. The individual stories are intriguing, the pace, uneven. But these are unlike anything else, up to the current day, and important.

Welcome to my Goodreads review of a novel that mocks Goodreads reviews! :-) (More about that later.) "Kudos" is largely dialogue-driven and set in the world of literary festivals and book marketing - and while Cusk only alludes to the events and places where she does actually take us, I think I solved some of her riddles. But let me start by outlining (haha, sorry) the story:

Faye, a writer and divorced mother of two (just like Cusk; Faye is also the protagonist of "Outline" and "Transit"), travels from Britian to Germany in order to take part in a literary festival. From the descriptions, I gathered that this city is probably Cologne (the underground auditorium being the Kölner Philharmonie, the festival being the lit.cologne, the design hotel being the Hotel Wasserturm, and the river being - of course - the Rhine). Fun fact: Rachel Cusk was a guest at the lit.colgne 2016, where she read from "Outline". At her hotel, Faye meets with her German publisher, who is a controversial man in the publishing world, although he - a salesman in his 30's - managed to save one of the country's oldest and most distinguished publishing houses after it had gone bankrupt. Here, Cusk is obviously alluding to the Suhrkamp controversy, a very public and soap-opera-like power struggle over the famous (and then-bankrupt) Suhrkamp publishing house, which is - you guessed it - Cusk's German publisher (and said salesman is Dr. Jonathan Landgrebe, although in reality, he doesn't quite look like his fictional version).

While in Cologne, Faye encounters different people from the literary world, talking to organizers, peers and journalists. Her outward movement is mirrored in the stories the people she meets tell her: All dialogue is dominated by the contemplation of life journeys and the passage of time, the juxtaposition of what lies behind and ahead of the characters. As it is typical for Cusk, the text sheds light on the dynamics of relationships and the role of women in society: "Kudos" is the name of a prize that is discussed in the book, and the question arises whether a category for male and female is in order, or whether only one person should receive the prize, regardless of his/her sex. Another topic that keeps coming up is Brexit and how Britain is perceived from the continent.

Once again, Cusk is using what she calls the "annihilated perspective", which means that while talking, her characters reveal things both about themselves and the other participants in the conversation. Instead of action, we get dialogue and thematically interrelated stories, and how Cusk weaves them together is absolutely captivating.

In the second part of the book, Faye travels on to a literary conference, and I guess the city she visits is Lisbon (a language that has a word for "a feeling of homesickness even when you are at home" is Portuguese (saudade); it's also a country whose people did "roam the world"; a capital close to the sea and famous for his steep terrain is Lisbon; the conference might be Disquiet International; the church is the Igreja de São Domingos). Similar to the first part, Faye meets and talks to people from the literary world, further illuminating the inner workings of the publishing world and a Europe in the state of flux. In case you might be irritated by the lack of, well, a storyline beyond that, trust me: To read Faye's conversations, all the little vignettes about relationships, literary careers and the state of our continent, is exciting and intriguing.

And now this Goodreads review will finish with a quote about Goodreads reviews - the following is stated by aforementioned German publisher (in the book, not in real life!):

"Sometimes, he said, he amused himself by trawling some of the lower depths of the internet, where readers gave their opinions of their literary purchases, much as they might rate the performance of a detergent. What he had learned, by studying these opinions was that respect for literature was very much skin deep, and that people were never far from the capacity to abuse it. It was entertaining, in a way, to see Dante awarded a single star out of a possible five and his "Divine Comedy" described as "complete shit", but a sensitive person might equally find it distressing, until you remembered that Dante - along with most great writers - carved his vision out of the deepest understanding of human nature and could look after himself."

Oh, the irony: Cusk's (American) publisher gave me a copy of her novel to review it on Goodreads! :-) But Cusk can certainly also look after herself, and this book is great. Go read it.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is my least favourite of the trilogy of Outline novels; somehow I found it less humorous and harder-going than the others. Faye is still her enigmatic self, going to various writers' festivals and conferences and being interviewed, in this instalment in the run up to and immediately after the Brexit referendum. The blurb suggested to me that Brexit would feature more than it in fact did; instead most of the conversations Faye has with people focus on feminism, and the roles of men and women, and whether they are or should be different.

At various times, however hard I tried, I could not grasp the leap characters seemed to make between on the one hand freedom or suffering or their own personal circumstances and morality on the other. Faye as ever keeps her own counsel.

My favourite parts were the initial encounter with the retired owner of Pilot the dog, and the story told by the interviewer of her relationship with her sister. I was touched by Faye's affection for her sons, and this was of course beautifully written.