Parade - Rachel Cusk
When reading the books on an awards shortlist - in this case, the Goldsmiths Prize - how do you decide where to start? D you start at the top, thus prioritising people whose surnames are earlier in the alphabet? Do you start with an author whose work you already know, if there are any? Do you read the blurbs and pick the one that sounds the most interesting - or the least, so that you can save the stuff you're looking forward to until the end? In this case, with a shortlist of six books I'm unfamiliar with entirely, I picked the one written by an author who I've at least heard of. And by "heard of" I mean "have seen the covers of her books and liked their graphic desgn, and know a little about her work without having read it".
As it turns out, I liked Parade a lot, though I think it may take me some time to glean meaning from it. It's very opaque - at times the writing feels deliberately passive, especially in the sections about the various artists named G. It reminded me of the sort of writing you hear read aloud in films when a character is meant to be a novelist. And yet, despite this, I still found those sections very compelling.
Thematically there's a lot going on in Parade. It's concerned with the nature of art, and artists, and the arrogance and selfishness required to creatte a career in the arts, to think that your work has value enough to put on display and to seek a living from that. (And I say this as someone who makes a living from my writing). It's also concerned with gender, and the performance of gender, and how that impacts and intersects with an audience's reception to your art, and your ability to live off art.
Given the aim of the Goldsmiths Prize - to recognise work that pushes the boundaries of the novel as a form - I have to think about this book in those terms, too, and there I'm not sure this succeeds. (I say "succeeds" as though this was an aim of Cusk's rather than something I'm bringing to the text based on the award it's been shortlisted for). Though I'm not familiar with Cusk's work firsthand I know enough about it to know that this is in conversation with her previous work and really following the path she's already walking, rather than doing something novel. It certainly didn't feel like something I haven't seen before, despite liking it a lot.
Despite that, though, I'm very glad I read this, and I'll definitely be seeing out more of Cusk's work.