The cover of Second Place (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021), by Rachel Cusk (image courtesy the publisher) Bafflement, alongside art, is Second Place’s central theme. Cusk’s narrator, a middle-aged, ...

Everyone remembers winners: Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Tiger Woods. But in his new book, photographer Sandy Nicholson captures the emotions of those who came in second. "It was a tie and the word I ...

The narrator of Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Second Place, lives at the edge of a marsh, a place of apparent peace. She loves to watch the water moving in over the flat land, advancing stealthily in a ...

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. By Judith Shulevitz SECOND PLACE By Rachel Cusk I can’t think of another way to say this: Rachel ...

Cusk loves to make metaphors out of a space’s vastness, where a landscape illuminates the drama of the narrator’s life: an unending sky that makes miniatures of airplanes, an ocean that drops its ...

Rachel Cusk’s “Outline” trilogy of novels blazed a trail in what might be thought of as the anti-confessional mode. Though centered on a writer named Faye, the chapters of these books are occupied ...

For competitors on America’s Got Talent, second place can mean their dream fell short. Not only do they miss the opportunity to call themselves a winner, but they also lose out on the $1 million grand ...

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