? What does it mean to truly experience the self? In a convention-breaking novel, Rachel Cusk presents a philosophical contemplation on identity through an abstract narrative structure. Laureate of the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize, Parade brings together fragments from the lives of various artists, exploring intimate experiences with gender, parenthood, self-perception, reality, and creation. At its core, the book centers around visual art — a realm Cusk has long engaged with in the same critical vein that shapes her writing.

The novel abandons traditional storytelling. Instead, it flows through recurring themes drawn from the characters’ lived experiences — each reflected in the titles of its four sections: The Stuntman, The Midwife, The Diver, and The Spy. The sections all follow double plotlines, the first three intersecting and the last following a separate thread. Real paintings are included throughout the novel, and while the artists are people Cusk has engaged with and written about, she leaves them nameless to bind them by anonymity.

The characters in Parade are constantly questioning their experience with the real world. The first artist we encounter paints upside down at a later stage in his career, finding more truth in capturing an inexact portrayal of the world. His wife, who is deeply disturbed by his artistic shift, gets hit on the head by a random woman in the streets of Paris. She projects her insecurities onto the incident, triggering a spiral of imposter syndrome about her identity as a woman. She somehow saw herself in the woman, believing that the attacker represented a mysterious alternate ego that protects her from the violence of womanhood.

Women, in art and as artists: One of the featured artists has a complicated relationship with her gender. She escaped her parents at 22, marrying a self-entitled lawyer and photographer in Germany with whom she later had a daughter. Despite her love for her daughter, she heavily resents women and idealizes men. She believes her inherent femininity is a taint on her art and tolerates her husband’s criticism of her artistic directions. This artist represents a woman who is hyperaware of her limited autonomy as a female painter, grappling with the implications of her gender, her unavoidable tie to motherhood, and a deep envy of the bodily freedom that men possess.

The self and the ego: These accounts of artists’ struggles challenge an assumed connection between creation and the ego, by depicting the brutal choice of having to accept or hide from the self. Some characters chose to be selfless observers while others chose to drown in their egos, but both are ultimately driven by self-expression. Parade is both riveting and abrasive, making for a unique book on identity and its fragile boundaries with art.

WHERE TO FIND IT- You can get a physical copy of Parade at The BookSpot, and you can grab the eBook on Amazon or Kobo.

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