A Region That Outlay Human Identity: Rachel Cusk's "The Last Supper"

Our first memoir in the Cordlivres Club! On this episode, we’re talking Rachel Cusk’s The Last Supper, from 2009, about a summer spent in Italy with her family. It’s all about art, language, meaning, truth, tennis—you know, typical stuff.

We get into Cusk's distinctive writing style, particularly her ability to blend abstract philosophical concepts with concrete human experiences through figurative language. I touch on her unique narrative technique of "first-person free and direct," which allows readers to experience conversations more intimately by subtly incorporating other characters' speech patterns into the narration.

We share a few passages from the book to demonstrate how Cusk explores the relationship between language, art, and experience, observing how she approaches memoir writing with those novelistic techniques t ...