The novel of unconnected narratives is older than you might think. Writers have always been acutely aware that similar experiences might be brought into comparison without the mechanism of a traditional plot. Why not put the life somebody lived in 1941 next to an unconnected life in the 1990s, and call it a novel? More of a whole than a volume of short stories, more expressive of separation and the whole breadth of society and history than a traditional novel can be, these forms lack only a convenient name.

AUGUST

It is one of those summer days when England is pretending to be another country, and flinty Stiffkey, on the north Norfolk coast, is festive in the heat, the sea shining, the marshes expansive, the sky endless. This is where I find the writer Rachel Cusk. She spends half the year here, the other half in London's Tufnell Park. We arrive at the same moment at her front door and as she gets out of the car, she is all grace, though possibly a touch flustered at having narrowly avoided arriving after me. She is dressed in jeans and a navy shirt. She is pretty, elegant and taller than I had imagined. I realise it is the most hazardous thing to have expectations and I'm talking about depth not height here to be tempted into thinking one knows her from her writing.

For there is a sense in which Cusk is a mystery; it is one of the reasons I want to meet her. She has written seven novels (the first, Saving Agnes, won the Whitbread first novel prize in 1993; others have been similarly feted) and three memoirs in which she spares herself nothing. She writes about strong feelings and excites them. Her book about motherhood, A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001), written after her first daughter was born and when she was pregnant with the second, got a violently mixed reception (she is the mother mums love to hate on Mumsnet) because it dared to describe new motherhood's limbo in exhausting, exhaustive detail.

In one of many remarkable passages in Rachel Cusk's new novel, the narrator, an English writer who has flown to Athens for a few days to teach a writing workshop, gives a detailed account of her first class, in which she asks each of the 10 students to talk about something they noticed on their way in. It doesn't perhaps sound like the most riveting premise for a scene, and there must be plenty of people in the creative writing business who have resisted doing their own version of it, wary of the risks of literary shop-talk. But Cusk, who has a gift for making the most mundane situations compelling, plunges right in, emerging with a miniature tour de force of human portraiture and storytelling virtuosity.

Outward appearances are calmly noted: the grey classroom with its humming computer "projecting a blank blue rectangle on to the wall"; the faces and gestures of the students themselves, one with "a demolished beauty she bore quite regally", one "whose expression I had watched grow sourer and sourer as the hour passed", each of them a study in shyness, charm, naivety, smugness or some other sharply observed quality.

From actress Liv Tyler in New York, to artists Gilbert and George in Londons east end, to the grim fight against the Ebola virus in the streets of Monrovia, we showcase the best photography commissioned by the Observer in August

Clear the bookshelves; no, clear the weekend diary until Christmas: the next few weeks are to see one of the biggest traffic jams of big-name, top-flight British fiction in recent publishing history.

A succession of serious novels with the worthiest of pedigrees, some of them already in the shops, will each be attempting to attract the attention of readers, critics and, ultimately, of prize judges.

Years ago, Rachel Cusk and I did a book event together. I remember a tensely beautiful and shudderingly self-possessed young person who, as we were whisked back down the motorway to London, confided that she refused to read contemporary literature and stuck resolutely to the classics.

I was startled, even a bit appalled. But I do see now that it's precisely this uncompromising, slightly diffident yet absolutely unapologetic intelligence that I've come to find most seductive about her work. That, and the fact that she's among the very few writers who can make me laugh out loud. All of these qualities are here in abundance in her new novel but there's something else far queasier and more mysterious lurking in its pages. The most exhilarating works of fiction are surely those that leave you both satisfied and a little stirred up and this has to be one of the oddest, most breathtakingly original and unsettling novels I've read in a long time.

"Since the death of Tony Benn, it is hard to think of any other living person who has chronicled his own life with quite such diligence," wrote Craig Brown in the Mail on Sunday in a caustic review of Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988-1998 by "the nice, genuine, amusing, etc, etc Michael Palin". The entries "contain nothing uncalled for: nothing upsetting or outrageous, nothing offputting or embarrassing or even mildly satirical Showbiz is to the fore Regarding other people, he is as sharp as a blancmange Palin is a master of the untelling anecdote He is also unexpectedly vain, or at least ravenous for praise". Complaining about his absence from the honours list, Palin also reveals "a powerful sense of entitlement". The Sunday Times extracted the diaries; even so its reviewer, Helen Davies, described the book as "breathless with encounters with the famous He reveals an  almost aggressive competitive streak, especially when it comes to how many books he sells". Nevertheless, the natural order of things soon reasserts itself: "It is a book you find yourself devouring in great greedy sessions."

"Outline is Rachel Cusk's first work of fiction for five years. Her last book, Aftermath, was a memoir recounting the fallout from the breakup of her marriage and was so mesmerisingly whiney and narcissistic that it won Camilla Long the Hatchet Job of the Year award for her excoriating review. Cusk's writing may sometimes be infuriating, self-indulgent and occasionally worthy of a nomination for Pseuds Corner but, to her credit, it is rarely that most dreaded thing: dull." The verdict of Carol Midgley in the Times was largely positive for the new book, which centres on a writer's trip to Athens: "It is a rich, thoughtful read There are some profound insights into human failings and frailty, into lack of self-awareness, though almost every character is in some way irritating, which makes it hard to care much about them." Elena Seymenliyska in the Daily Telegraph gave the novel five stars out of five. It is, she argued, full of "wonderful surprises: subtle shifts in power and unexpectedly witty interludes". For Lucy Scholes in the Independent, Outline, like the non-fiction before it, "is a book about what it means to be a woman, but in it Cusk has transformed sentiment that was derided as gushing self-obsession and self-pity into a uniquely graceful and innovative piece of artistic self-possession."

Six contenders for genuinely inventive fiction award include Paul Kingsnorths The Wake and experimental novels by Will Eaves, Ali Smith and Rachel Cusk

Paul Kingsnorths crowd-funded first novel The Wake will compete with works by Ali Smith and Rachel Cusk for the Goldsmiths prize, a new award for innovation in fiction which recognised Eimear McBride with its inaugural trophy.

Aiming to recognise published fiction that opens up new possibilities for the novel form, and to reward a book that is deemed genuinely novel and which embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best, judges have shortlisted six titles for this years award. Chair of judges Francis Spufford said the line-up captures so much of the versatility with which the novel, these days, is being stretched, knotted, rejigged, re-invented.

Laline Paull’s daring allegory The Bees secures a place among eminent finalists for the 2015 prize including Sarah Waters and Ali Smith

A debut novel set in a beehive and dubbed “the Animal Farm of the 21st century” by chair of judges Shami Chakrabarti has made the shortlist for the Baileys women’s prize for fiction, alongside books from some of the most acclaimed writers working today.

Laline Paull’s The Bees tells the story of Flora 717, a lowly, ugly sanitation worker in her hive who reaches the Queen’s inner sanctum. The author, a screenwriter and playwright turned novelist, will compete for the £30,000 Baileys prize with five authors who have all been previously shortlisted for the award, organisers announced.

From a misfit bee to a Renaissance artist, and from Athens to Peshawar, the six novels shortlisted for this year’s women’s prize for fiction span continents and genres

News: Baileys prize shortlists debut alongside star names

William Hill says The Paying Guests most likely to take women’s prize for fiction, while Kobo ebooks calculates it has won over most readers

• How well do you know fiction’s female protagonists

Sarah Waters’ story of a widow and her daughter who take in a pair of lodgers in 1920s London, The Paying Guests, is the novel on the Baileys shortlist to have best held readers’ attention, according to ebook retailer Kobo.

As judges chaired by Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti prepare to announce their choice of winner from the six-strong shortlist for the Baileys women’s prize for fiction, Kobo said that Waters’ contender was not only the most bought novel from its ebook store, it was also the most read.

Related: Baileys prize shortlist - in pictures

Ahead of her Artsnight show looking at how art and science converge, the tech champion on Alice Oswald’s distillation of The Iliad, Rachel Cusk’s foray into Greek drama and jewellery that manages your social media

Dotcom entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho, co-founded travel website Lastminute.com in 1998. She studied ancient and modern history at Oxford, worked in IT and media consulting and co-founded the karaoke chain LuckyVoice in 2005. She is a board member of Marks & Spencer and digital skills charity Go ON UK. Lane Fox was appointed a crossbench peer in the House of Lords in 2013, becoming its youngest female member, and chancellor of the Open University in 2014. In March this year, she delivered the Richard Dimbleby Lecture. Martha Lane Fox’s Artsnight is on BBC2 on Friday, 11pm.

Related: A quarter of UK businesses think digital is irrelevant – they're wrong

Almeida, London
Rachel Cusk’s updated version of Euripides’s tragedy is wild and witty but dilutes the tragedy by eschewing the violence

Reimagining the classics is fine. There is, however, a massive contradiction in Rachel Cusk’s alternately exhilarating and baffling new version of Euripides’s Medea. Cusk preserves the outward form of a drama about a woman driven to kill her own children but radically alters the climax to deny us cathartic satisfaction.

Related: Oresteia review – Icke brings us Aeschylus for the modern age

Related: Bakkhai review – Ben Whishaw enchants but play draws admiration, not zeal

When the curtain goes up on Rachel Cusk’s version of Medea at London’s Almeida theatre, her whole family will be in the audience. The writer says she is tempted to spend the evening “around the corner in a pub with a bag over my head”, but talking in her agent’s offices about her first experience of play writing, she sounds more determined than afraid. Rupert Goold, the director, has been an “astonishing mentor”, she says. Writing for him has been like learning Chinese, or playing tennis with Roger Federer: every time she thought she had played her best shot, it was batted back.

When I was allowed to read the script a few weeks ago it was still a work in progress, with ideas being passed back and forth between Cusk, Goold and the actors. Cusk says she and Goold have tussled over the fate of Medea’s children, whom in the original version she murders as part of her revenge against Jason, the husband who has abandoned her. Both the writer and director know that Cusk’s decision to spare the children their deaths at their mother’s hand is provocative. What audiences and critics will make of this, and the less bloody but still tragic alternative she has come up with, they are about to find out.

Euripides wants to liberate women but he is worried about what is going to happen to children if women are liberated

Related: Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation by Rachel Cusk – review

School taught me that life was hard and people were cruel

Almeida, London
Kate Fleetwood stuns in the title role of Rachel Cusk’s fierce and intelligent adaptation

Has Homer become our new Shakespeare? Are the ancients our new contemporaries? As the stage increasingly turns to classical Greek writers for echoes of our current torments (see also this week’s premiere of Simon Armitage’s Odyssey), the most common resonance has often seemed vengeance, the locking of generations into feud. This production emphasises two other compelling aspects. The voices of women ring out in a way that is rare on the stage. It is not only that they have good speeches; their experience is the subject. What’s more, this is not a land-locked, insular literature: its experience ranges over Europe.

It was an inspired move to commission Rachel Cusk to deliver a new version of Medea for the Almeida Greeks season. Inspired, because Cusk has written so intimately and ferociously about her own feelings on motherhood and divorce. In doing so, she has attracted almost as much ire as the child-killer Medea. Inspired too, because she is a writer of intricate intelligence: a fact that sometimes gets lost in her voluble intensities. Medea is the hardest of female Greek voices to make coherent, though it is the one most often heard. Is she mad to begin with, or driven mad? If not mad, is she a monster?

The scenes between Salinger and Fleetwood contain the most convincing row I have ever heard on stage

Related: Rachel Cusk interview: ‘Medea is about divorce … A couple fighting is an eternal predicament. Love turning to hate’

As the response to the Almeida’s updated take on Euripides has shown, some audiences and critics are still wary of female protagonists – and the women behind them

It has been a fascinating few days for women and theatre. Comments by Vicky Featherstone, the artistic director of the Royal Court – about how critical and audience responses to male and female dominated narratives are markedly different, and that strong female characters often make viewers uncomfortable – generated considerable debate. Meanwhile, in Australia, there has been a fascinating conversation going on below the line on Jane Griffiths’s piece about critical reaction to her reworking of Antigone, in which she suggests that the reviews provided a startling example of the way criticism is gendered.

These conversations are not new. I recall Timberlake Wertenbaker talking 20-odd years ago about the panic that breaks out in a theatre when the critics (in those days mostly male) turn up at a theatre to discover that the pilot is female. Only last week, I was talking to Brigid Larmour, who runs Watford Palace where the policy is to commission equal numbers of men and women. She recalled working at the RSC in the early 80s, where female directors “only got one chance” in the face of box office or critical failure, while their male counterparts got a second bite at the cherry.

Related: Medea review – Rupert Goold directs a ferocious Kate Fleetwood

From Gypsy to Harlequinade and The Moderate Soprano, London’s theatres are awash with shows about showbiz. Are they a valid celebration of the power of art, or just for self-indulgent luvvies?

With the recent opening of Kenneth Branagh in Harlequinade and the impending arrival of a revival of Funny Girl with Sheridan Smith, there will be more than a dozen shows in London that are about showbiz itself.

That’s not including The Woman in Black, which uses the structural conceit of a drama being staged, and Chekhov’s The Seagull (the superb current Chichester revival is expected to arrive in London next year), in which the creation of a piece of theatre is simply a plot strand. It’s a disqualification that also applies to Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places and Things, which examines addiction through a protagonist who is an actress, and Rachel Cusk’s rewrite of Medea, in which the title character’s husband is reimagined as a movie star.

Related: Lawrence and Chekhov: reimagined or violated?

Rachel Cusk’s Outline was one of the most remarkable novels of 2014, written with classic elegance and cool comic verve. It was also a very moving book. The title was exact, because the narrative line cut with forensic clarity as Cusk wrote of the individual’s isolation, self-delusion, pain and puniness in the world.

The narrator of Outline, Faye, reappears in Cusk’s new novel Transit. Faye is named only once in each novel and there is very sparing description of her exterior identity. Her family, appearance, childhood and upbringing are so far not part of the story. Faye’s recent history has already been established in Outline: she is a writer with two young sons, separated from the children’s father and living for the most part alone. The children are never present during the novels’ timespans. In Outline, they are back in London while Faye teaches a creative writing course in Athens, and in Transit they are with their father while Faye’s new flat in London is renovated.

Related: Rachel Cusk: 'Aftermath was creative death. I was heading into total silence'

From Alice Munro to Rachel Cusk, Anne Tyler to Margaret Atwood, great writers reveal a more complicated story than we’re inclined to tell ourselves

When my second novel, Hope Farm, was published, I was surprised to find I’d created a divisive character in Ishtar, the hippie mother. I knew Ishtar was difficult, and made mistakes, but I wasn’t prepared for the outrage some readers felt at her behaviour. It occurred to me that it wasn’t her making mistakes in general that upset them so – it was her making mistakes in her job as a mother. Mothers, it would seem, are not allowed to get away with much.

What is it that causes us to judge them so harshly? I suspect there’s something very basic in it, to do with the exquisite vulnerability of children, the likelihood of life holding disappointment, difficulty and possibly worse for them, and the mother’s place in this equation as the deliverer of the child into the world, the responsible party.

Related: Hope Farm by Peggy Frew review – a painful tale of mother and daughter

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