Saving Agnes

A new paperback edition of Rachel Cusk's debut novel, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award. In Saving Agnes, Agnes Day-subeditor, suburbanite, failure extraordinaire-has discovered disconcerting gaps in her general understanding of the world. Terminally middle-class and incurably romantic, Agnes finds herself chronically confused by the most basic interactions. Life and love go on without her, but with a little facade she can pass herself off as a success. Beneath the fiction, however, the burden of truth becomes harder to bear.

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.