Parade by Rachel Cusk

In Parade, Rachel Cusk once again demolishes the conventions of what fiction can be and do.

This thought-provoking and frenetic book is a mind-bender, with its “fragmented structure and multiple alternating narrative perspectives…nameless characters and various locations.”

Is Cusk’s latest work shocking? Confusing? Trailblazing? I would say yes to all of the above. But, is she “an artist so comfortable with her craft as to ably disregard—indeed, devour—every rule of the medium?” Also, yes.

This book is for you if:

• You aren’t afraid of a kind of weird, yet critically acclaimed book, like Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour, or Samantha Harvey’s Orbital.

• You want to flex your English major chops : Cusk vs. Woolf, specifically Parade vs. Mrs. Dalloway. Discuss.

• …or lean into your French intellectual side (Camus, Rohmer, Ernaux).