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An impossible guest: Second Place, by Rachel Cusk, reviewed

29 May 2021

9:00 AM

29 May 2021

9:00 AM

Second Place Rachel Cusk

Faber, pp.208, 14.99

A great writer must be prepared to risk ridiculousness — not ridicule, although that may follow, but the possibility that the work will collapse into some or other version of nonsense. If it doesn’t, though, it is precisely the elements that flirt with disaster that will likely make it both superficially distinctive and artistically substantial.

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