Second Place

Local Description

Review by Kat

Our narrator, M, is a writer living in solitude with her partner in a remote coastal landscape. She recounts a time she met a devil-like figure on a train, and then encountered the work of an artist that moved her profoundly. In the present, she invites the painter to live and work in their second place, he says no and then yes, and brings an uninvited guest. Her grown daughter and her boyfriend are also forced to come home due to unnamed (but decipherable) circumstances. M is soon surrounded by people, but it’s the elusive artist that possesses a dark power over her mind and body. Each of their few and far between conversations are Intense, fraught with emotion and power struggles. A transforming novel about the dynamics of men, women, power, art, isolation, and connection -- I wanted to bookmark every page and live in Cusk’s insightful moody world as long as possible.

- Kat, Bookseller

Description

From the author of the Outline trilogy, a fable of human destiny and decline, enacted in a closed system of intimate, fractured relationships. A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally between our internal and external worlds. With its examination of the possibility that art can both save and destroy us, Second Place is deeply affirming of the human soul, while grappling with its darkest demons.  

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Awards

Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2022. Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021

Reviews