Second Place: A Novel

In her novel Second Place, Rachel Cusk refers to a set of themes implicit in narrative discourse; Such as reading the concept of female individual identity through the aesthetic perspective of the other, or the internal impressions generated by the artwork, its reflections, and its semiotic transformations in consciousness and subconsciousness.

Also, we can sight the overlap between the development of self-concepts about themselves and the change of artwork in different psychological and cultural moments which recreate a new artistic reflection of the ego.

In addition, the narrator, in her discourse, implied the continuous exhaustion of the central space structure; That the discourse includes a group of moments of separation, silence, irony, and misunderstanding between the heroine and the artist in the socio-cultural context. In contrast, we find that they communicate in the hidden aesthetic world in the creative consciousness of each.

Consequently, the relationship of opposition between them remains, with a kind of aesthetic communication that I think continues even after the death of the artist in the novel. Therefore, these previous themes are interconnected in the discourse in order to suggest the continuous return of the soul to the authenticity of the possible spiritual and aesthetic spaces, and their numerous reflections within and outside the socio-cultural context at the same time. It is as if we go back to the first image of the neglected strange man and to the first image of the ego in the artist’s painting, in order to clearly see the spiritual connection and caution or fear together.

In the previous context, the characters of the novel developed in a dialectical and experimental way from a state of communication through art to a state of separation and then access to the middle compound included in the state of the union in a potential space, in other words, in an interspace that exists beyond both reality and the painting.

Finally, I see that Rachel Cask’s novel includes experimental aspects in the narration, especially when the structures of darkness and the bright color of light overlap in the artist’s painting that reflects his other or dreamy presence. Also, the heroine and her daughter overlap with the echoes and specters of Cézanne and Renoir’s paintings sometimes in the artist’s consciousness and subconscious. Therefore, we confirm the novel has some avant-garde tendencies, postmodernism, and beyond because the heroine continues to search for spiritual originality and depth as well.