Lost Little Lamb: Rachel Cusk's Saving Agnes

Daisies may be absent from Rachel Cusk's Saving Agnes, but the protagonist, the Agnes of the title, is a lamb. Well, not literally. Literally, she's a twenty-something junior editor for the trade magazine Diplomat's Week. She's also Roman Catholic, and phonetically her name recalls the Latin phrase Agnus Dei (Lamb of God). From what very, very little I remember from my childhood church-going Sundays, an oft repeated refrain from scripture reads, "Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Grant us peace." Agnes has undertaken quite a project for herself, personal and worldly salvation. And peace of mind.

Agnes is not all that different from Helen Fielding's Bridget, of Bridget Jones's Diary fame. She's an editor in London, relies on a close circle of friends, and looks vainly for love and, well, for just plain happiness. Agnes is not quite as quirky and lovingly goofy as Bridget, for Cusk's tone is more solemn than Fielding's. Agnes's vulnerability hovers on the brink of a nervous breakdown without the temporary relief of Bridget's endless cigarettes and units of alcohol. And, like the lamb of her name, she's meek. Almost too meek. Unlike Bridget, however, Agnes seeks to save not only herself but also those around her, including the homeless street people she pities.

The novel opens with the slow petering out of a party which doesn't "lurch Titanically" but rather falls apart gradually, as evidenced by a "crack, a long narrow wound in the sitting-room wall." Likewise, the crack within Agnes continues to grow ever deeper as she seeks, what? Even Agnes is not sure. This slim novel (which won a Whitbread First Novel Award) finds Agnes searching for the answer to the age-old question, so what? What's the purpose? Why am I here? She can't decide if she likes her job. The certainties of childhood have vanished with adulthood. Agnes is stuck in limbo. Like Bridget, she's needy in relationships, and like Bridget, she possesses a penchant for falling for the wrong guy.

There are some wonderful evocatively written passages throughout the novel. Consider, for instance, the following advice Rachel's mom bestows upon her: "And what I've been trying to say to you is that you have to go on, because as much as life knocks you down, really life is the only thing that can pick you up again." There are also some not so wonderfully convoluted passages that require you to back up and, with Agnes-like confusion ask, "what?" For example: "The pattern of their confluence emerged and her days arranged themselves around it like petals on a stalk." (i.e. Her relationship with her new boyfriend begins to follow a set pattern. Oh.) And, sometimes the repartee among Agnes and her friends or between Agnes and her brother is a bit too witty. It's all funny and apt and suited to each character's personality, but it's a bit too much, as if the characters are always on; hence, the witticisms often prevent the characters, or the relationships among them, from developing more fully. Too much sarcasm paints over the sometimes nuanced portraits of friendships. When Cusk flakes away at the one-liners and exposes the subtleties, she's dead on target. At one point, Agnes and her friend Nina are tentatively reconciling after an intense spat, and they find themselves making coffee in the kitchen: "The strain of politeness lent things a certain awkwardness...In the course of their duties they almost collided with one another, and found themselves engaging in a quickstep of embarrassed avoidances like strangers on a pavement." We've all traveled across that uncomfortable landscape before.