What a strange novel. Mysterious. Opaque. Obscure. Although tasty overall. Even if we don’t understand everything in long stretches.
Posted at 8:30 p.m.
Written like a timeless letter (a monologue?), to the “I”, to a certain Jeffers (who it is, we will almost never know), The addiction (a clever pun, you’ll see) tells the story of a certain M., a woman in her fifties with a troubled past (and above all an infinite lack of self-confidence), who one day falls under an artistic spell de L., a renowned artist. M. therefore decides to invite L. to his “outbuilding”, a sort of annex to her country house (with her second husband Tony, an enigmatic man of few words), which she operates more or less as a artist residency.
You follow ? The latest novel by Rachel Cusk (in the running for the Booker Prize last year), a Canadian-born author to whom we owe domestic life (adapted for the cinema), has its share of gray areas, to say the least. And it is wanted. You will know (almost) while turning the last page. It’s brilliant and disappointing at the same time.
But let’s get back to the plot: without spoiling anything, let’s just say that L. will finally accept the invitation, showing up with a young “friend” (Brett), that M.’s daughter will be there with her lover, and that all these beautiful people will live behind closed doors as improbable as it is delectable. In the scathing sense of the term. It’s that L. and his sweet will be odious (the word is weak, rather downright abject) and M., borderline pathetic.
The author, always incisive, loses us at times in long digressions. She is, however, at the top of her game when she tackles the complexities of human relationships. And let’s just say there’s plenty of material here.
The addiction
Rachel Cusk (translated from English by Blandine Longre)
Gallimard
199 pages