Second Place by Rachel Cusk

​here’s literary fiction and then there’s literary fiction and typed up this doesn’t have the same effect as when spoken aloud, so how do I describe the sort of self indulgent, preciously worded, overwrought and overwritten work like this? It’s certainly literary in that it goes a long way to showcase the powers and beauty of words and in its efforts to understand and elevate emotions and inner workings of the mind. But very consciously so, reading this book you are constantly aware of the author doing this, the stylistic linguistic tricks don’t disappear into the story, in fact it’s almost as if they use the story as a mere canvas to show themselves off against.
Which still might have worked had the story and its cast not been so fundamentally offputting. So let’s talk about that…there’s a very simple basic plot that involves a middle aged woman who has a nice comfortable life and a lovely comfortable man to share it with who takes care of her financially and emotionally, but apparently not enough, so that she develops something of a crush on a famous artist and invites him to stay with them, on their property, in the second place they have built just for guests. It’s a sort of thing from a bygone era, when the wealthy got actively involved with the arts by sponsoring (in a way) the artists. And in fact, this is precisely what this book was inspired by Lawrence’s stay with a wealthy NY socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan at her Taos estate. Though one can only hope the real thing was way less convolutedly antagonistic than the fictional account.
L, the artist, known by the mere first initial, is from the get go a giant turd of a person, a precocious prick whose early found fame has apparently liberated him from all manners. At first he tosses the invitation aside, but eventually dire financial circumstances force him to reconsider and so he shows up, with a much younger woman in tow no less and expects to be doted on. And the protagonist of the novel is thrilled to do so. In fact, she relocates her own daughter and her milquetoast of a bf into the main building with her and her ever patient spouse, so that L and his lady might have the privacy they require.
From then on, it’s all about the screwed up group dynamics of this uneven and unpleasant situation. The protagonist never becomes likeable in her fawning adoration of the man who plainly wants nothing to do with her, but use her for her money. L never becomes…well, he doesn’t even come close to likeable, he remains a prick throughout, graduating from precocious to petulant and then descending into his own tragedy too profoundly to be rescued even by money. L’s lack of any semblance of gratitude is only ever as striking as the protagonist’s lack of need for it. She’s driven by something different, something less quantifiable and infinitely sadder.
In the end, they are both tragic in their own ways, though she manages to maintain her unevenly loving marriage as a safety net. L, to the very end, remains unworthy of attention or affection. The note in the end doesn’t do much to rectify that. And yes, I know, I know, it’s dangerous and possibly wrong to view fictional characters through the prism of one’s own morality, but it can’t be helped. We read as we are and as I am, I was appalled by this characters. And not all that enamored by the overdone writing either. There is, objectively, a certain beauty to it, but it’s too much of the same, most meaning and profundity wrapped up in so many words that it’s all but obscured. There are some interesting and well done meditations of the nature of relationships, marriage especially. But overall the affect is mostly muted but the thoroughly unpleasant story.
The book’s official description mentions female fate and male privilege, because of course that’s what you mention nowadays to sell books, but frankly the female in this book is the privileged one and the power games played between her and L have less to do with feminism and wokeness than they do with personal shortcomings of those two as people. The publishers have obviously tried to make the book fit into the contemporary hot button mold, but it’s nowhere near there.
In the end, I can’t remember the last time an obviously well written literary book has made me so angry. The look at me, look at me, look how clever I am with words thing it had going was just much too much. And who the f*ck is Jeffers? Why is the entire stupid thing addressed to Jeffers who never makes an appearance or is mentioned otherwise? Is it to justify the epistolary form? Is Jeffers the one who gets and enjoys this sort of thing? Well, good for Jeffers. I’m out of here. At least this book had the decency to be short. Definitely an acquired taste. Thanks Netgalley.