Book Club Guide

Transit

by Rachel Cusk · 2016 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

The self that is being rebuilt — and the people who help and hinder it
Renovation as a metaphor for self-reconstruction
The conversations that leave marks — what we carry from strangers

About this book

The second Outline novel follows the narrator Faye through a home renovation, a literary festival and a series of conversations that continue to define her through absence. More overtly connected to a recognisable London life than Outline, Transit extends the trilogy's investigation of identity, change and the stories other people tell us about ourselves.

Published in 2016, Transit is the second of the Outline trilogy. Cusk described the trilogy as an attempt to find a form that could hold experience without distorting it through narrative convention.

Discussion questions

Faye is renovating a flat while rebuilding her life after the events implied in Outline. How does the renovation function as a structural metaphor — and does this parallel feel earned or schematic?
The conversations in Transit range further than in Outline — into professional life, literary events, family. What does this expanded range add to the series' argument about identity and narrative?
Several encounters in Transit are specifically about writing and literature. What is Cusk doing with these meta-literary moments — self-conscious positioning or something more integral?
Transit is the middle of a trilogy. Does it feel like a middle — does it develop the form, or does it feel like more of the same?
The Outline trilogy has been enormously influential on contemporary literary fiction. What specifically has it influenced — and is the influence a good thing for fiction?