RACHEL CUSK Second Place. Reviewed by Linda Godfrey
Rachel Cusk’s 11th novel is touted as a return to plot and character; in the process it explores power, art and agency.
Second Place is an epistolary novel comprising a series of letters written by M to a friend, Jeffers. She writes of her experience looking at the artwork of the artist L in Paris, then inviting him to stay with her and her partner, Tony, on their secluded marshland property in the guest house they call The Second Place. M is frank with Jeffers about her feelings, her world view, her despair, her family and her relationship with L.
The location and characters are inspired by arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoir Lorenzo in Taos, about the time DH Lawrence stayed with her in Taos, New Mexico, in the 1920s. In Second Place, L is a visual artist.
M is inspired and energised by L’s work; she thinks of her own life, how it seems empty, and believes she can be reinvigorated by having this man around her. And so she invites L to stay with her and Tony.
M admits that she is a shell, not sure what she feels or thinks. She fits in with what other people do, or she sits around and does nothing. The property is two hours from the local small town, and the isolation gets to her. Tony is loving, calm, has a sense of himself and has his life on their marshlands to get on with. M does not participate in that life, except to cook what food he produces.
L puts off his arrival until he is broke and has largely lost his reputation as an artist. He has nowhere to go. His presence, when he arrives, is disruptive. He brings a young woman, Brett, with him. Initially Brett treats M as a servant, complaining about the quality of the sheets provided, shoving them into M’s hands, wanting more luxurious ones.
L is dismissive of M, cruel to her and irritated by her very presence. He actively avoids her company, and when they do meet by accident, he argues with her. He even tells her to her face that he finds her physically disgusting.
While he spoke, a feeling had been growing inside me, of the most abject rejection and abandonment, because what I understood him to be saying underneath all his explanation was that my used up female body was disgusting to him and this was the reason he kept me at a distance, even to the point of being unable to sit next to me!
He finds the much younger Brett, and M’s daughter Justine, considerably more attractive.
M, for her part, has fallen under his spell. She wants his approval, his love, and she wants him to paint her. She wants to insert herself into his life, to have him absorb her into his world so that she can feel fulfilled.
‘It may come as a surprise to you to hear it, but I am also trying to find a way of dissolving,’ I said to him indignantly, while tears surged in my eyes.
During the Sydney Writers Festival I went to a streamed session of Annabel Crabb’s interview with Rachel Cusk. I was surrounded by strangers but the first thing people asked when they sat down was, ‘Have you read the trilogy?’ Outline, Transit and Kudos were confessional monologues told to an ‘absent’ narrator. Of course everyone around me had read and loved them.
Given the success of the trilogy, it is interesting that this novel is touted as Cusk’s return to plot and character. It is done, as I said above, in a series of self flagellating letters to M’s friend Jeffers. Readers will realise that they are witnessing the playing out of a very familiar situation: that of male privilege lording it over a submissive, compliant woman, an empty vessel waiting to be filled by his demands and wants, keeping her in second place.
M realises what has made her that way, needing approval and always running behind someone, trying to catch up, begging to be included. She writes to Jeffers:
If you have always been criticised, from before you can remember, it becomes more or less impossible to locate yourself in the time or space before the criticisms were made: to believe in other words that you yourself exist. The criticism is more real than you are: it seems in fact, to have created you.
So, we are not just reading the story of a cranky old painter being mean to his host, though certainly L is flexing his sense of entitlement in every way.
We are reading a parable, the story of how most girl children have been brought up, probably from before time. There is a burden of expectation put upon girls to be socialised in a specific way, to be second-class citizens, to do the patriarch’s bidding. Strictures, abuse, laws, violence are all there to follow up so that girls learn the early lessons. It is telling that the book is called ‘Second Place’, not ‘The Second Place’ after the guest cottage on M and Tony’s land.
The twists and turns of the book are revelatory. I found myself understanding what M’s upbringing had done to her sense of self to make her so passive, even down to not trusting her own thoughts and instincts. On the other hand there were times when I wanted to slap her and say, ‘Get a grip woman. Stop hanging about doing nothing and get on with your own life.’
The narrative plays out through the lens of Cusk’s interest in gender, sex, power and art, so that we see M understand the forces that created her, we see her wrestle with the notion of what it might mean if she put herself first, and whether, finally, she can create an authentic self.
Rachel Cusk Second Place Faber 2021 PB 216pp $27.99
Linda Godfrey is a poet, editor and teacher. She lives on Wodi Wodi land, on the south coast of New South Wales.
You can buy Second Place from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
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