Reading Order
OutlineOutline Trilogy Reading Order
Rachel Cusk's Outline (2014) is the first novel of the Outline trilogy — a formally radical work in which a novelist teaching a creative writing course in Athens narrates conversations with strangers on a plane, in a restaurant, in her classroom, telling almost nothing about herself directly while allowing the stories of others to create, in the gaps and echoes, a portrait of her own life. One of the most formally influential novels of the 2010s, it launched a new mode of autofiction in which the narrator's self is constituted through the stories of others rather than through direct self-disclosure.
Where to start
Outline
Complete Outline Book List
- 1Buy
Outline
Rachel Cusk·2014 - 2Buy
Transit
Rachel Cusk·2016·Second novel — the narrator has returned to London, is renovating a flat and teaching, and again constitutes herself through conversations with others. - 3Buy
Kudos
Rachel Cusk·2018·The concluding volume — the narrator at literary festivals and events, the trilogy reaching its formal conclusion.
Outline — Frequently Asked Questions
What order should I read the Outline trilogy?
Outline (2014) → Transit (2016) → Kudos (2018). The trilogy should be read in order, as the formal project builds across all three volumes and the cumulative effect is the point. Outline is the most formal innovation; Transit is slightly more conventionally engaging; Kudos is the most abstract and the most satisfying as a conclusion for readers who have committed to the project. Each can be read as a stand-alone, but reading only Outline is like hearing the first movement of a symphony.
What is the Outline trilogy about?
The trilogy follows a narrator — never named, though she shares obvious biographical details with Rachel Cusk — through a series of conversations with strangers and acquaintances: on a plane to Athens, at a creative writing course in Athens (Outline), in London while renovating a flat and teaching (Transit), at literary events and festivals (Kudos). She almost never speaks directly about herself; the reader constructs a portrait of her through the echoes and contrasts between her and the people she encounters. It is a novel about how identity is constituted through relation to others, and about how a woman's self is experienced differently before and after divorce.
Is the Outline trilogy autofiction?
The Outline trilogy is generally described as autofiction — fiction that draws heavily on autobiographical experience while making no claim to literal truth. Cusk went through a very public divorce in 2012 and was brutally criticized in British press for writing about it honestly in her memoir Aftermath (2012); the Outline trilogy, which begins with a narrator who has recently divorced, is widely understood as her return to the subject in fictional form. Cusk has been careful to describe the books as novels rather than memoirs, and they are clearly shaped by the formal choices she makes — the narrator's near-silence about herself, the use of conversation as the primary narrative unit — that mark them as art rather than autobiography.
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