Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Obrys | 2014 | Rachel Cusk | N/A |
| 2 | Outline | 2014 | Rachel Cusk | Buy |
| 3 | Transit | 2016 | Rachel Cusk | Buy |
| 4 | Kudos | 2018 | Rachel Cusk | Buy |
| 5 | Κύδος | 2018 | Rachel Cusk | N/A |
The Outline trilogy began with Outline in 2014 and immediately struck critics as something unfamiliar. The narrator, Faye, arrives in Athens to teach a writing course and spends the book listening to other people talk about their lives. Her responses are minimal. Her own history surfaces only in fragments. It is a novel of radical passivity in which the narrator becomes defined — as the title suggests — by what surrounds her rather than what she reveals.
Transit (2016) follows Faye back to London, where she is renovating a flat and navigating a new phase of her life. Kudos (2018) takes her to a literary festival, completing a loose arc that never resolves into conventional plot. The three books are best read in order, though each stands on its own terms. They were praised by critics worldwide and shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Goldsmiths Prize, cementing Cusk’s reputation as one of the most formally inventive writers working in English.