Second Place by Rachel Cusk

I have gotten a great start on this year's Booker Prize long list, with this being the second book I have read within the first month after it was announced. That said, I wich I had read the end note first. It gives a context for the book, by stating that the novel is in some way paying a debt to the bohemian socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan and her 1932 memoir Lorenzo in Taos, about DH Lawrence’s chaotic stay at her artists’ colony in New Mexico. Apparently in the end he threatening his hostess and her future in some way, the whole thing was so traumatic. In this book there is an L who is the invited guest to the hostess' second place, not her primary dwelling, we are led to beleive, but there is also some aspect of who is going to win, when it isn't a race or a contezst, but somehow it seems like there is a com[petition, and a sadness that underlies the whole narrative. if I had known it was a book built on the framework of another, and what that was I might have felt like I understood it better, but I ended up feeling it was well written and plain weird.