A vivid and elegant account of a family's season abroad by one of our finest contemporary authors.
Casting off a northern winter and an orderly life, a family decides to sell everything and go to Italy to search for art and its meanings, for freedom from routine, for a different path into the future. The award-winning writer Rachel Cusk describes a three-month journey around the Italy of Raphael and rented villas, of the Piero della Francesca Trail and the tourist furnace of Amalfi, of soccer and the simple glories of pasta and gelato. With her husband and two children, Cusk uncovers the mystery of a foreign language, the perils and pleasures of unbelonging, and the startling thrill of discovery--at once historic and intimate.
Both sharp and humane in its exploration of the desire to travel and to escape, of art and its inspirations, of beauty and ugliness, and of the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity, The Last Supper is an astonishing memoir.
About the Author :
Rachel Cusk is the author of the Outline trilogy, the memoirs A Life's Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Paris.
Antonia Beamish is a voice-over artist and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. She is also a professional actress best known for performances in films such as The Last Horror Movie, Dead Creatures, and Chemical Wedding.
Review :
[Cusk] has an amazing ability to strike to the heart of things, to look afresh and not to overlook, which is suited to this journey into otherness...Lively, ardent, and suffused with generous empathy.
-- "Guardian (London)"
[Cusk] writes with the intelligence, wit, and keen eye for detail demanded by any kind of reporting.
-- "New Yorker"
A fascinating inquiry into expectations and of our desire to rigidly control our lives.
-- "Los Angeles Times"
As elegantly written and astutely observed as her fiction, Cusk's memoir describes looking at art and getting to know the locals from Tuscany to Naples...Compelling.
-- "Kirkus Reviews"
Each sentence is crisply perfect, blinding brilliantly detailed descriptions to sensitive, sharp observations...Brutally honest...Cusk is a master of restraint.
-- "Bookforum"
Exquisite prose.
-- "Boston Globe"
