A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail Chosen as one of fifteen remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write in the 21st century by the book critics of The New York Times Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.

How a NUBClubber felt about Outline is an almost pure response to how much plot you need to like a book. What was not in question in any way was Cusk's ability to write. We all agreed that the book was very well-written, wielding subtlety and subtext in a masterful way. Cusk's study of a writer traveling, reacting to strangers she encounters and the conversations she has, was just brilliant in how much you learn about the character in such a minimal sketch. The book should be read in a masterclass of writing about how to use extremely limited exposition to show a character's past, emotional state, or thought. Outline is the perfect title of the book; it's the portrait of the character is the lightest of sketches, drawn through observations, choices of content, and minimal action. All this meant there were beautiful depictions of the random conversations that the narrator witnesses that slowly roll around the theme. But that light touch left other NUBClubs unsatisfied. No one argued that the book had a strong plot, as almost nothing happened and certainly nothing progressed. The character travels, the character goes on a boat on a quasi-date, the character has a drink. The plot-minded NUBClubbers couldn't take it. They argued that the good writing in the book was just not worth reading if nothing ever happens. And that was the divide on this book. Either you loved the technique and enjoy Cusk's light touch, or you desperately waited in vein for something bold to happen in a beautiful set of pointless conversations. But at the level of writing, no one could say anything negative about Outline.