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Aftermath

On Marriage and Separation 'Cusk breaks all the rules' Independent

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Aftermath

By: Rachel Cusk
Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
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In the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk's marriage of ten years came to an end. In the months that followed, life as she had known it came apart, "like a jigsaw dismantled into a heap of broken-edged pieces".

Aftermath chronicles this perilous journey as the author redefines herself as a single woman and creates a new version of family life for her daughters. She discovers previously unknown strengths and freedoms but also finds herself suddenly vulnerable to outsiders, unwelcome advice, social displacement and the absence of a clear authority. The pressure to reconstruct a 'normal' life for her daughters competes with the sense that nothing feels normal at all.

Aftermath is a masterly work in which the author, at her most candid and rigorous, charts the largely unwritten journey back to order from the chaos that is left when a family breaks apart.

©2020 Rachel Cusk (P)2020 Faber & Faber
Divorce & Separation Relationships
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Outstanding full-speech a woman who uses art and her experience to think what is to live with grief loss anxiety anger with the capacity to make this a powerful autobiographical writing. The last chapter trains is a feast of writing worth the journey. For those who have attacked her honesty and its brutality of sense making have turned away from being and turned to the safety of ‘The They’ the narration brings it into being.

The deepest cut - the second cut

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