Kudos

A woman on a plane listens to the stranger in the seat next to hers telling her the story of his life: his work, his marriage, and the harrowing night he has just spent burying the family dog. That woman is Faye, who is now on her way to Europe to promote the book she has just published. Once she reaches her destination, the conversations she has with the people she meets – about art, about family, about politics, about love, about sorrow and joy, about justice and injustice – are the most far-reaching questions human beings ask. These conversations, the last of them with her son, rise dramatically and majestically to a beautiful conclusion. Kudos completes Rachel Cusk’s trilogy with overwhelming power. The trilogy is one of the great achievements in fiction.