Saving Agnes

A new paperback edition of Rachel Cusk's debut novel, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award.
Agnes Day - sub-editor, 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.