Summary

In Chapter 1, Rachel Cusk’s narrator, Faye, sat on a plane traveling between two European cities, and struck up a conversation with the man who sat next to her. The man was tall, and was restless in his coach seat. Faye, the narrator, who sat on the aisle, offered to switch places with him, an offer the man gratefully accepted and which opened up an avenue of conversation between the two. The man explained that he usually traveled in first class, but did not specify why he was traveling in coach when he met Faye. Faye also noticed that he possessed the trappings of wealth: a nice suit, as well as a “heavy silver watch…and new-looking leather shoes” (3).

The man told Faye that air travel was a regular part of his profession, as a director of a management company, from which he...