The World, According to Artists

One morning, as she’s walking along a quiet, sunny street, a woman—the wife of an artist, G, newly famous for painting his subjects, and her, upside down, like Georg Baselitz—is attacked by a female mugger. In shock, she imagines her assailant looking back at her ravaged body as if admiring a work of art.

This random act of violence catapults us into Rachel Cusk’s unconventional new novel, Parade. With explicit, searing testimony about the perils of being a woman, mother, wife, and artist, Cusk, who was herself once mugged and faced a lingering trauma, here drills down so deep it hurts: Parade is hot to the touch, “a dark twin,” as she characterizes the mugger, of her other works.