''Cements her reputation as one of the most fierce and elegant chroniclers of how we live now.'' Stephanie Merritt, Observer''Cusk is a master of the genre and her collection of sharp, provocative essays had me transfixed.''Guardian''Fiercely intelligent, with enviable prose that is at once luminous and precise.'' Kathryn Maris, New StatesmanFrom Rachel Cusk, the award-winning writer whose novels have redrawn the boundaries of fiction, this series of essays offer new insights on the themes at the heart of her life’s work. Encompassing memoir and cultural and literary criticism, with pieces on gender, politics and writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Olivia Manning and Natalia Ginzburg, this collection is essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, both startling and rewarding to behold.The result is a cumulative sense of how the frank, deeply intelligent sensibility – so evident in her stories and novels – reverberates in the wider context of Cusk''s literary process. Coventry grants its readers a rare opportunity to see a mind at work that will influence literature for time to come.