Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk (born 8 Feb 1967)^[1] is a Canadian-born novelist and writer who lives and works in the United Kingdom.

Biography

Rachel Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and spent much of her childhood in Los Angeles. She finished her education at St Mary's Convent, Cambridge. She read English at New College, Oxford. Since then, she has travelled extensively in Spain and Central America.

She is the author of six novels. The first, Saving Agnes (1993), won the Whitbread First Novel Award. In The Lucky Ones (2003) she uses a series of five narratives, loosely linked by the experience of parenthood, to write of life's transformations, of what separates us from those we love and what binds us to those we no longer understand.

In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'.^[2] That year she published The Lucky Ones (2003), her fourth novel, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award. Since then she has published four more novels; her latest is Outline (2014).

She has also written several non-fiction books. A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001) is a personal exploration of motherhood. The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy (2009) is a memoir about time in southern Italy.

Cusk is divorced from her second husband, photographer Adrian Clarke,^[3] with whom she has two daughters, Albertine and Jessye.^[4] Cusk explored their marriage in Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (2012). (Camilla Long's review of this book won the Hatchet Job of the Year award.)^[5]

Bibliography

Novels

• Saving Agnes (1993)
• The Temporary (1995)
• The Country Life (1997)
• The Lucky Ones (2003)
• In the Fold (2005)
• Arlington Park (2006)
• The Bradshaw Variations (2009)
• Outline (2014)

Non-fiction

• A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001)
• The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy (2009)
• Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (2012)

Introductions & Forewords

• Bonjour Tristesse by François Sagan (Penguin, 2008)
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (Folio Society, 2009)
• The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence (Vintage, 2011)
• Complete Stories by Kingsley Amis (Penguin Classics, 2011)

Awards and prizes

• 1993 Whitbread First Novel Award - Saving Agnes
• 1997 Somerset Maugham Award - The Country Life
• 2003 Whitbread Novel Award (shortlist) - The Lucky Ones
• 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction (shortlist)- Arlington Park

Further reading

"Suburban Worlds: Rachel Cusk and Jon McGregor." In B. Schoene. The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

References

External links

• Rachel Cusk page at British Council for Literature site