The trilogy was a huge success, the equal of Edward St Aubyn’s better-known Patrick Melrose sequence. Cusk’s Faye trilogy – Outline, Transit and Kudos – was narrated by a writer negotiating the often murky territory of the literary world, from festivals to creative writing classes, while charting a path between entitled men and overlooked women. When a writer has completed a highly acclaimed sequence of novels, it must be both liberating and terrifying to start over with a blank canvas.

If summer guests are anything like Lawrence or L, then I will be keeping my Seomra firmly off bounds to visitors this year, even when social-distancing rules are lifted. Not so, however, as an afterword explains the novel owes a debt to an arts patron’s memoir of DH Lawrence’s stay with her in 1930s New Mexico. Having read most of Cusk’s novels, and being aware of her propensity for transplanting scenarios from her life into her fiction, I found myself wondering who the painter at the heart of the story was, for he’s a figure of such narcissism and arrogance that I assumed he must be out there somewhere, annoying people. Sadly, the garment in question does not appear to bring luck, as Cusk didn’t win the prize and M is confronted by something so upsetting that it’s among the highlights of the book. I was reminded of this while reading Second Place when M, a novelist, goes to have her portrait painted by L, and chooses her own wedding dress for the sitting. Being an unreconstructed middle-aged man, I dared to compliment her on her outfit and she surprised me by saying that it was, in fact, her wedding dress. A few years ago, I attended a literary awards ceremony in Toronto where Rachel Cusk, one of the shortlisted authors, arrived wearing the most stunning white dress.

Rachel cusk novel