Think I'm going to re-download the whole trilogy

and binge listen to it. Ms. Cusk is such a great stylist and observer. The performance by Kate Reading is just right. Cusk's observations on parenting, on sexism, on life are so striking that I often had to rewind a bit to make sure I had it right.

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Reader issue

I couldn’t finish this listening to this book. The reader’s portentous monotone as if the quite innocuous, ironically presented material were divine decree, deep as the sea, grew unbearable. Do authors get to approve readings of their books I wonder. This doesn’t apply to the first part of the book about the pilot and the dog, which was riveting, though, and well survived the reading, even appropriate to it, but then that plot broke off suddenly and switched into an implicit protest against the vapidity of book fairs and the boringness of writers who often are very private people gathering because it’s good for business. I’ll have to read the rest in print to see if the writer was able to spin this indigestible straw into golden pancakes and whether there was something there that the reading drowned in its nauseatingly repetitive beating down of mechanical waves on the marooned body of text.

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Kate Reading is A Great Reader

This is a quiet book, much like the previous two in the Trilogy. A writer talking to other writers about representation and misrepresentation. And kids. And divorce or separation. And there is the requisite story about a dog. If you like Lydia Davis’ writing, you may enjoy this as well.

Kate Reading reads well. Her voice and characterization are well done. And you get the sense that she gave some thought to what to make of the narrative.

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