Second Place is the first-person testimony of another Cusk-like writer, M, who invites a celebrated painter, L, to stay in the annex of her marshland home. So what now? Brexit apparently encouraged Cusk to quit England for Paris, only for coronavirus to stall the move her new novel suggests she’s in limbo creatively, too. By the third part, Kudos, with its never-ending parade of self-absorbed ignoramuses, the narrative engine felt pretty nakedly rigged for the purposes of marrying her trademark philosophical reflection with her other calling card – the kind of poison-pen portraiture for which she has had a reputation at least since 2009’s The Last Supper, her disputed memoir of a summer among English expats in Tuscany.

The result was sophisticated and stimulating but also highly mannered, with the polyvocal conceit increasingly at odds with Cusk’s cool monotone. As well as a way to shrug off the obligations of plot and scene-setting, the structure was a smart response to the hostility that greeted Cusk’s 2012 divorce memoir, Aftermath if you want me to shut up, she seemed to say, then so be it.

R achel Cusk’s Outline trilogy essentially took the form of a string of monologues heard by a silhouetted but recognisably Cusk-like narrator as she teaches writing, renovates her flat and embarks on a book tour.

Rachel cusk second place