OUTLINE by Canadian R. Cusk is Outstanding Do NOT Miss OUT on this Novel

OUTLINE is an engaging novel told through conversations taking place in planes, cars, boats & bistros centered around a novelist/prof. flying from London to Athens to teach a writing class.  While held captive in flight, her seat mate (a.k.a. neighbor) commences a dialogue that diverges into topics of love, marriages (particularly his own,) affluence, failures and the flotsam jetsam in life.  "So much is lost, he said, in the shipwreck.  What remains are fragments, and if you don't hold on to them the sea will take them too." Each dialogue brings fresh and cogent insights into relationships, honesty and the art of conversation.  While seemingly combative, the discussions are astute & candid.  Her loquacious neighbor tells her "Love restores almost everything, and where it can't restore, it takes away the pain."  In esoteric prattle over wine with writers, one commented that we tend to fictionalize our own experiences to convince ourselves our lives have some kind of design and this makes us significant.  Canadian author Rachel Cusk writes with a clear and unique voice.  She's been honored with the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards.  The motley mix of students in the novel learn the craft of writing is born from keen observation.  When listening to others, the novelist becomes transformed. "While he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an OUTLINE, with all the detail filled in around it."  Reading Cusk's novel is a fascinating lesson of our meanderings in life.

NOTHING HOLDS BACK the NIGHT by French Author Delphine de Vigan

Delphine de Vigan has received numerous literary awards for her writing including the Rotary Int'l & Prix des libraries.  De Vigan's powerful novel NOTHING HOLDS BACK the NIGHT, reads as a journalistic memoir of her upbringing with a mother suffering from bi-polar disorder.  To call this work a novel is misleading but to capsulize the format of this edifying work would not do it justice.  De Vigan writes with a journalistic eye and courageous candor.  She uncovers the tragic & glamorous life of her mother Lucille as a young girl and the fractious impacts it had on her & her sister.  Delphine begins with the discovery of her mother's body days after her suicide.  Delphine is compelled to examine what led to her mother's death through family interviews & diaries as she reexamines her own life.  Delphine was burdened with the torment & responsibility of having a mother who battled mental health & hospitalizations. Lucille an admired beauty, earned a substantial income which helped support her large family by modeling.  Tragically, 3 of her brothers died young; 2 by suicide.  Delphine informs us of her mother's life burdened with death, incest, depression & mania.  Lucille frequently moved herself & her girls giving them a nomadic, unconventional lifestyle.  Nonetheless, Delphine writes of mutual devotion and an overriding obligations to care for herself, her sister and her mother.  Mixed in with all the darkness we glimpse an extended & connected family living in Paris and the countryside that is both covetable and forlorn.  Reading this novel/memoir is going down a rabbit hole that provides, if not an understanding of mental illness, a vivid, troubling portrait of what it is like to grow up in a frenetic household of dysfunction.    

A.M. Homes' "May We Be Forgiven" Humanities' Frailties Duly Noted

"May We Be Forgiven" is a novel that is simultaneously repugnant & miraculous.  Amer. writer A.M. Homes novel was awarded the Women's Prize for Fiction ('13.)  The 1st chapt. of Homes' novel was originally submitted as a short story.  Salmon Rushdie declared it one of the best Amer. Short Stories ever written.  I compare Homes' with Bellows, Stegner, Roth & Updike.  These great writers are all zeitgeists and highly crafted artists.  The beginning is gruesome.   Many will be repelled enough to stop reading.  For those with stamina to continue, you will be richly rewarded with rich storytelling in the absurd & the brilliant eye of social commentary.  Harold Silver, a college prof. & Nixonophile is having a Thanksgiving dinner with his family.  Harold's brother George is a successful TV exec. with a beautiful wife, Jane. They have a young son Nate & daughter Ashley.  Claire & Harold are married without children.  Harold has always lusted after Jane.  A lurid affair between them ends with George bashing Jane's head while she & Harold are in bed.  From this horrendous murder forward, the plot  meanders in unexpected direction with bizarre, fully developed characters. George is imprisoned.  Claire leaves him.  And, Nate & Ashley are left under his care.  Harold seems an empty vessel (and "an asshole according to Nate) but after assuming responsibility for his niece, nephew & Ricardo, the child orphaned by his brother's car crash, he becomes a man of substance who rises to meet challenges head-on and fully embraces life's emotional impacts.  "The depth to which I now feel everything, when it is not paralyzing is terrifying."  Harold becomes an excellent listener and care giver for the children.  In turn, Harold reaps a lot from Nate, Ashley & Ricardo "As children can do so effortlessly, we instantly go from the most solemn to joyous."  This novel is a cosmos of wonder.  Ashley, at the following Thanksgiving quotes to those assembled together "Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy." (A. Frank)