A Novel Without Characters

Rachel Cusk's lonely experiment: Parade. Her new book, a novel of elusive vignettes, it can be seen as an allegory about both fiction and the gendered shapes of selfhood.

- By Nicholas Dames

Start, as one tends to do in Rachel Cusk’s writing, with a house. It is not yours, but instead a farmhouse on the island property to which you have come as a renting vacationer. It has no obvious front door, and how you enter it, or whether you are welcome to do so, isn’t clear. You are, after all, only a visitor. Built out in haphazard fashion, the house seems both neglected and fussed over, and as a result slightly mad. A small door, once located, opens to reveal two rooms. The first, although generously proportioned and well lit, shocks you with its disorder, the riotous and yet deadening clutter of a hoarder. As you navigate carefully through it, the sound of women’s voices leads you to a second room. It is the kitchen, where the owner’s wife, a young girl, and an old woman—three generations of female labor—prepare food in a clean and functional space. When you enter, they fall silent and seem to share a secret. They consent to rather than encourage your presence, but here you will be fed. Of the first room, the owner’s wife comments dryly that it is her husband’s: “I’m not allowed to interfere with anything here.”

This is a moment from Parade, Cusk’s new book, and like so much in this novel of elusive vignettes, it can be seen as an allegory about both fiction and the gendered shapes of selfhood. After reading