KUDOS

(Faber £16.99) WheN Rachel Cusk published her bitter memoir, Aftermath, about the break-up of her marriage, the response from some quarters was so critical that she was unable to write anything again for years.

Kudos brings to a close the trilogy of novels on which she eventually embarked. here, the narrator, Faye, a writer and divorced mother, just like Cusk, travels to a literary festival in southern europe and, more than in the first two books, mainly listens, while others talk.

Kudos lacks the shocking clarity of its predecessors, but anyone interested in where the novel as a form goes next should read it.