Saving Agnes - Rachel Cusk

Agnes Day - sub-editor, suburbanite, failure extraordinaire - is unwell. Terminally middle-class, incurably romantic and chronically confused by life's most basic equations, Agnes discovers disconcerting gaps in her general education which make recovery unlikely. Life and love go on without her, but with the barest minimum of cosmetic assistance she can pass herself off as a success. Beneath her fiction, however, the burden of truth becomes harder to bear.

'This is a sceptical, ironic, beautifully resonant prose, articulate throughout, with never a lapse. . . a splendid novel'

Philip Hobsbawm, Guardian

'Told with irony and insight and some surreally beautiful imagery. At times it made me laugh out loud' Shena Mackay

'She is a writer with a poet's eye for convincing detail, and touches on the raw emotions of life in a way that is affecting and true' Sunday Telegraph

'Funny and full of promise. Rachel Cusk writes very well and distinctively' Margaret Drabble

'Rachel Cusk is the outstanding discovery of the year' Daniel Johnson, The Times