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.