Quarry

by Rachel Cusk, Siemon Scamell-Katz (Artist)

Novelist Rachel Cusk explores themes of arrival, transition, and loss in this account of a time spent in Greece. Her experience of the potency and fragility of landscape leads to an examination of the moral ambiguity of human creativity. Questions about writing, reproduction, gender, the meaning of location, and the role of translation in the maintenance of coherence, arise amid the cross-currents of a sensory experience of place and of nature. The text is partnered – rather than illustrated – by the paintings of Siemon Scamell-Katz, whose responses to the same events and landscape create a visual essay of their own. This dialogue between language and image represents also a search for meaning, by two artists whose shared life nonetheless gives way to the autonomy and solitude of the creative act.

36 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2022

About the author

Rachel Cusk was born in Canada, and spent some of her childhood in Los Angeles, before her family returned to England, in 1974, when Cusk was 8 years old. She read English at New College, Oxford.

Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.

She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'

She lives in Brighton, England.

Reviews

[kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

quite possibly my favorite rachel cusk??? she’s so good here. obsessed with this perfect little essay on translation and motherhood and aging and moving and language !!!

[sophie blyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant essay about transitions, arrivals, departures and impermanence, contrasted with the meditations on the seemingly immortal medium of marble. Cusk shines here

[Michael Hopf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked it up at Shakespeare and Co in Paris. Read it while riding the metro. Oh to have the ability to form sentences like this woman. She is so amazing and I love her so much. Such a cool thing to get to add to my collection. I love you Rachel Cusk!

[T P Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting and beautifully produced brief essay on a trip to Greece. It's well written but didn't do much for me. The accompanying paintings by Simeon Scammell-Katz were more memorable. Not bad of its kind.