The Goldsmiths Prize was established a decade ago to celebrate a quality in contemporary novels that (oddly, given the name) is not especially common: novelty. Indeed the “novel” is a bit of a misnomer: breaking new formal ground – repurposing or discarding existing conventions, discovering or imposing fresh ones – is, among modern practitioners, by no means a universal impulse.
The winner of this year’s Goldsmiths Prize is perhaps foremost among contemporary British novelists in her explicit, methodical dedication to that impulse, which in her hands is virtually a discipline. Rachel Cusk’s body of work is formidably distinctive, and her new novel, Parade, slim but complex, is the latest product of the systematic restlessness driving her 30-year career and its various metamorphoses.
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