Melinda Harvey at The Sydney Review of Books:
Angela said she had read Cusk’s newest book on the plane over. It slowly dawned on her that the essays in that collection contemplate a variety of ostracisms: from being given the silent treatment by one’s own parents to the exclusion of women writers from the literary canon. Aftermath, Medea, the Outline trilogy – they’re all about being cast out into the wilderness. In an essay called ‘Coventry’ Cusk characterises such exile as ‘ejection from the story’. The only thing to do once you’re ‘living amidst the waste and shattered buildings, the desecrated past’ is to search ‘for whatever truth might be found amid the smoking ruins’.
It’s bad enough for adults when they’re cast out of Eden. But adults have usually had some sort of hand in determining their fate; children have theirs thrust upon them.
more here.