Coventry

Coventry by Rachel Cusk is a great collection of essays, at times rivaling Joan Didion's The White Album in pure literary achievement. The writing is as precise and thoughtful as her Outline trilogy, but the nonfiction subject matter is especially thrilling. Here, we get an report on Cusk's interior life--her marriages, children, parents, literally her interior decorating--and it's both refreshing and ballsy in its unflinching honesty. The first six essays are, sentence-by-sentence, perfect. They're white-hot captivating, surprising, revealing, unapologetic, and illuminating.  I will reread those again and again. If the book drops off in its second half it's only because the first half was so good. The second section is a collection of literary reviews and cultural observations which, while good, are simply not as mesmerizing. They read like introductions to other books--which in some cases they are--and they're fine.

But those first essays! "Driving as Metaphor," the opener, is exactly that, a coolly detached explanation of the banalities of driving English country roads. It's weighted with remarkable symbolism and subtext. The title essay explains the concept of being sent to "Coventry," which has to do with being excluded and cut-off socially, and the surprising advantages of alienation. "Aftermath" is a searing divorce memoir. "Lions on Leashes" is perhaps the most honest account of parenting (or otherwise attempting to control) teenagers that I've ever read. Based on what we read, Rachel Cusk in real life seems inflexible, blunt, and fiercely independent. She's also self-aware and intelligent enough to reveal this and reflect on it in powerful, original ways.