Kudos is the third novel in a trilogy comprising Outline (2014) and Transit (2016) - and it couldn't have ended on a higher note. The novel begins, like Outline, on an aeroplane, where once again the man sitting next to Faye unburdens himself of his life story as she's making her way to a literary festival in Southern Europe. This scene fuels and sets up a stream of conversations, of people, strangers or otherwise, coming in and out of focus. With hypnotizing strokes of prose, Cusk tackles matters of philosophy, literature, gender politics, relationships and identity - you will be swept off your feet by this novel!

It must be exhausting for Faye (the book’s protagonist) to listen to so many intense conversations, particularly because most if the characters only talk about themselves. We learn a lot less about Faye in this, final, volume of Rachel Cusk's trilogy than in the two previous volumes. Men do not come out of the book well. Faye may have remarried, but most of the women she meets testify to the brutality of men. She meets an entitled man on a plane who prevails upon Faye to endure a long story about a dying dog he loves more than his family. Children are described as being collateral damage in relationship breakdowns. The only nice male Faye meets is a young man on the autistic spectrum. Another vain and morose man at the literary conference she attends is perhaps modelled on Karl Ove Knausgaard. Cusk pokes fun at the man being feted for writing about domestic life in contrast to women writers who are dismissed for it. Kudos also has a pop at readers, and by extension reviewers, who want to read something sufficiently literary to make themselves feel clever. I don't know as much about annihilated perspective as Cusk does, and missed some of the references that other reviewers picked up on. No matter. Rachel Cusk wants to challenge and entertain, and she does both.

I started reading the Outline trilogy last year and it was important to me to finish it to see where it went in the end. Where it goes in the end, however, is where it was heading all along, nowhere. Cusk is a brilliant writer, but for me, this isn't enough. There is too much absence written into these books. Faye is not a person, she's a device for depositing stories in. I'm sure that all these stories, had you the time and will to puzzle them out, would give you a sense of who Faye is and why it's these stories and not the million others she has had in her life that are important to relate. By the time I finished this I had really begun to hate Faye. I dislike her passivity. I dislike her sponge like quality and I really dislike the way that the pain and sadness of her sons, which appears in each book, is written about as if it has nothing to do with Faye at all and she has no agency to help them. I feel like with a Rachel Cusk novel, I eat and eat and eat and never, ever feel full.

Faye, a British writer, is on her way to a book conference somewhere in southern Europe. She is expected to give several interviews and to take part in social events. The people she meets all have a story to tell – and they do. Faye herself hardly ever talks, especially not about herself, she somehow makes people around her open up and share their thoughts with her. First, it’s the passenger seated next to her in the plane leaving London. Later she meets interviewers who much rather talk about themselves than about their interviewee, her publisher shares her thoughts on the book market and fellow authors who want to convey a certain image of themselves. “Kudos” is certainly a very special novel. I do not think I have ever read a book in which a first person narrator tells a story and at the end you ask yourself if you got only the slightest idea of the narrator herself. Faye hardly reveals anything, even though she is interviewed over and over again, we only know about a divorce and a son and the fact that she’s a writer – we do not even know what her current is actually about. Yet, I think Faye might have another function that providing a clear picture about herself. She is more like a canvas, she motivates other characters to paint themselves on her, she is their means for expression. This goes quite well with the title “Kudos”, praise for exceptional achievement or fame, especially in the arts. However, what has Faye done? We know nothing of her own achievement, she is well known for sure, but what exactly for remains in the dark. What we know is that her private life has not been that successful, the separation of her partner and a son who prefers to stay much rather with the father than with her. Only once, at the very end of the novel, is she in contact with him, but only because he cannot get in touch with his father and needs an adult to share his nightly disaster with. The things the characters share with Faye vary from professional fulfilment and familial shortcomings, over feminism to literature and its quality. Yet, their opinions are neither discussed not questioned, they are just statements that you can ponder. I do not really know what to make of this, I like characters sharing strong opinions on something and thinking about it, but I also appreciate if an author provides a kind of objection or agreement. “Kudos” is the concluding novel of Cusk’s trilogy which started with “Outline” in 2015 and continued 2016 with “Transit”. I haven’t read the previous ones thus I do not know if we get a better idea of her protagonist through them. However, I didn’t feel like having had to read them to enjoy “Kudos”. The novel is remarkable in several ways, it reveals a lot about human nature and in particular human narcissism. The words are carefully chosen and the sentences wisely constructed, the language is simply beautiful. All in all, an outstanding piece of art. Kudos for that.