Transit and the Outline Trilogy by Rachel Cusk

Backlisted

Backlisted Podcast

Arts, Books, Leisure, Hobbies

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Something a little different this week. Andy, Una and Nicky discuss the novel Transit by Rachel Cusk, the second part of her award-winning Outline trilogy. Outline, the first volume was published in 2014, with Transit following two years later and then finally Kudos in 2018; our conversation encompasses all three books. Backlisted began not long after Outline was published, and in the time we’ve been on air, the novels have gone from being well-reviewed new titles to bestsellers to backlist classics. When the history of early 21st-century literature is written, Rachel Cusk may well be cited as the figure responsible for taking the genre of autofiction into the mainstream. All three of us have a distinctly different relationship to these novels and we thought it might be illuminating to spend a hour or so comparing notes. Good news: it was! We hope you enjoy listening to us talking about reading books about people talking about writing books about people talking about books, as much as we enjoyed talking about them. *For £150 off any Serious Readers HD Light and free UK delivery use the discount code: BACK at seriousreaders.com/backlisted * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes and original writing, become a patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we start, a big thank you to serious readers for supporting backlisted.
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0:52.7	And now on with the show.
0:58.1	Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books.
1:04.6	The novel featured on today's show is Transit by Rachel Cusk,
1:09.8	the second part of the author's Outline Trilogy,
1:13.7	first published in 2016 by Jonathan Cape in the UK,
1:18.9	and the following year by Farah Strauss and Giroux in the US.
1:24.1	Inevitably, our discussion today will also encompass the first volume, outline, published in 2014,
	...

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