NPR's Favorite Books of 2019 Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline Trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (The Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions. Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.

This title was first published in 2000: Coventry is synonymous with both the creation and relative decline of the British motor car industry. This volume utilises the extensive range of primary sources on the subject to explore the relationship between the car industry in its local context and the wider economic, social and political environment. It analyses the emergence and early dominance of Coventry’s motor manufacturers, the rise of volume production in the 1930s and the instabilities and renaissance of the post-war era. Specific chapters deal with the industry’s response to the demands created by the two world wars. A number of themes run throughout the book including the structure of the industry and the relationship between its various sectors, resource provision, management and labour relations, and the nature and response to market demand. The book also provides fascinating insights into the history of some of the most evocative marques in the car industry, including Daimler, Jaguar, Alvis, Siddeley, Standard and Rover.