Something a little different this week. Andy, Una and Nicky discuss the novel Transit by Rachel Cusk, the second part of her award-winning Outline trilogy. The first volume, Outline, was published in 2014, with Transit following two years later, and finally Kudos in 2018; our conversation encompasses all three books. Backlisted began not long after Outline first appeared, and in the time we’ve been on air, these novels have gone from being well-reviewed new titles to bestsellers to backlist classics. When the history of early 21st-century literature is written, Rachel Cusk may well be cited as the figure responsible for taking the genre of 'autofiction' into the mainstream. All three of us have a distinctly different relationship to these novels, so we thought it might be illuminating to spend a hour or so comparing notes. Good news: it was! We hope you enjoy listening to us talk about reading books about people talking about writing books about people talking about books, as much as we enjoyed talking about them.

Books mentioned
Rachel Cusk - Outline; Transit; Kudos; Saving Agnes; A Life’s Work; Aftermath
Dorothy Richardson - Pilgrimage 1; Pilgrimage 2; Pilgrimage 3; Pilgrimage 4
Deborah Levy - Things I Don’t Want to Know; The Cost of Living; Real Estate
Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends