Book, Second Home[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. M, a middle-aged writer with little expression, is on fire. Fire is, at least, one of the images she uses to try to explain the events that shook the peaceful life she leads alongside her husband on the property where they live, on the banks of a swamp. The person who set the family routine on fire was L, an artist who stays in the cabin where the couple usually receives artists — their second home. M is obsessed with L, and places different expectations on him. The intricate relationship between the two develops during this kind of artistic residency, also shared by Brett, the girl that L takes with him, and by M's family. In a retrospective and sometimes incomplete account, M tells episodes of L's stay in the swamp, tempering the narrative with reflections and experiences from the past. Themes dear to Rachel Cusk, such as motherhood, art, romantic relationships and women's professional lives reappear in Second House. Instead of the attentive observation of Faye, narrator of the trilogy that guaranteed Cusk a prominent place in contemporary prose, we see in this novel a woman writhing with her subjectivity, casting sparks of doubt over herself.