Book Review: Transit by Rachel Cusk

You know how I recognize and appreciate a really good writer? When no matter how mundane is the topic, it sparkles by the way in which the words are put together to create a story. Most often, out of nothing. In the words of Faye, the narrator of Transit: `(...) each reader came to your book a stranger who had to be persuaded to stay´.

Transit is the middle book of the Rachel Cusk trilogy. Logically for my reading habits, I would have take all the books and read them chronologically. If I would have plan to read them, but I didn´t. It just happened to see Transit available at the library and spontaneously decided to loan it. 

I ended up reading it in a sitting, sipping the words and the sentences, although not necessarily interested in what was really happening in the book. 

Faye is a middle-aged woman, recently divorced, with two boys, a writer - whose job and presence is mentioned in different social contexts to be encountered with replies of the kind ´I think I´ve read one of your books but I don´t remember which one´. From a life episode to another, there are dramatic topics sliding into the conversation: marriage, stability and freedom, writing and creativity, parenting and love, women writers encountering male predators (of different shades). A discussion at the hair dresser about hair dying turned into a philosophical dialogue with Dale, the hair stylist (´What´s so terrible of looking of what you are?´, ´What you need isn´t a colour wash, it´s a change of attitude´). 

Often, various definitions of freedom are coming into question, but it is not how I usually see it - as a freedom of choices - but rather as a chance of moving within a predictable framework, with a high degree of repetability and consistence. Interestingly, as I never think about freedom in this way. 

Frequently, the characters are involved in rebuilding/refurbishing projects, which could be more than a proper construction challenge, but involves methaphorically, although a bit cliché, the idea of a life that before goes on, it has to be completely upside-downed. Sometimes life is as boring as that.

But no matter how common this kind of transit is, the power of telling stories saves, by the insidious way in which it can make sense or build sense from the simplest fact. Maybe Faye has right and marriage or relationships are like fairy tales sustained by ´the avoidance of certain realities´ and ´the suspension of disbelief´. It also might be that human relationships - including friendships - simply die when we are out of words and stories.

Most probably would love to read the other parts of the trilogy and other books by Rachel Cusk because intellectual approaches of simple life encounters are so mind-refreshing. 

Rating: 4 stars