From Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy, comes this startling, exhilarating novel that once again expands the notion of what fiction can be and do. Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints ...

NUBClub was not much of a fan of Cusk's experimental novel about art and how it intersects with the stuff of life. Cusk's story is a set of vignettes circling around an artist named G. In different sections of the book, G is a different person, changing gender and home and forms of art. But the novel is more about the characters around G and how the art and artist affect their lives. Most of NUBClub didn't like this conceit -- it was hard to make sense of why these scenes were put together and what was supposed to be consistent about G throughout. Nick defended the work, arguing that some of the scenes, notably the restaurant scene of the failed conference about G, were beautiful examples of Cusk's minimal descriptive prose, but the majority of us didn't find anything to connect to. It's an interesting concept, but we recommend you look at Cusk's Outline series to get a better sense of her brilliance. This was an experiment that didn't land for us.