achel Cusk’s repeated attempts to exterminate the novel while still writing one are genuinely impressive. Ten years ago, frustrated by what she called the ridiculous act of “making up John and Jane”, she wrote, a compelling trilogy in which the narrator, whose biographical circumstances seem to match Cusk’s, reveals almost nothing about her life or feelings, and instead recounts the monologues of people she encounters.
The novel is divided into four parts , each of which examines the complexities of artistic identity. There are mini-essays on the relationship between art and subjectivity, art and madness, dreams, terror, violence, the female body, marital politics, mother-child entanglements. Sections have appeared in print elsewhere: a version of The Stuntman was a 2023 New Yorker essay; an iteration of The Spy appeared last year in Harper’s Magazine.
Early on, the narrator is violently knocked on the head by a stranger as she walks down a city street . The female assailant flees, pausing briefly to observe the pain and confusion she has created. The notion of the artist as an observer runs through Parade: the artist is a spy, hidden, invisible, effaced. The act of observation isn’t straightforward, though – nothing is with Cusk. The watcher/artists perceive the world upside down, at an angle, or partially, through windows or lenses.
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