Kudos novel6/28/2023 If you’ve read the earlier books in the trilogy, you’ll be familiar with Cusk’s ruminative extensions of thought, usually relayed through stretches of indirect monologue. The novel is preoccupied with the question of who succeeds in life and why, and how – such as the college student’s award – gender will affect the way that credit is given and taken. But in Kudos, the overlap between book title and prize title can’t help but feel like a conceptual hint. Calling it a central theme might feel a bit diminishing the brilliance of these novels is partly their radical irreducibility. The fact of gender is everywhere in Cusk’s quietly staggering and intellectually entrancing trilogy, which began with Outline (2014) and continued with Transit (2017). Why must “the fact of gender (be) retained beyond that of excellence?” he wonders. He’s as baffled by the muddled etymology – kudos, a Greek noun, seems to have been made plural retroactively – as he is by the need for two prizes. A college student explains to the narrator – the middle-aged novelist Faye – that he’s been given the Kudos award at his university, which recognizes the most outstanding male and female student. It’s the only novel in the trilogy in which the title appears very conspicuously in the book’s plot. The final instalment of Rachel Cusk’s trilogy of autofictional novels is titled Kudos, a word that typically means credit for an achievement or, simply, congratulations. HarperCollins Publishers, 240 pages, $26. Log In Create Free Account Open this photo in gallery:
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