Many of us wish that we could leave the everyday life behind and escape somewhere for a few months, somewhere new and exciting where we don’t have to endure the ordinary drag of life. Rachel Cusk did just that and tells us all about it in her book, The Last Supper.

Rachel and her husband were living with their two kids in Bristol, England, and they had the 'perfect' life. They had good jobs and healthy kids, but Bristol was becoming oppressive. They needed change, an adventure, so they pulled their kids out of school and moved to Italy for three months.

As residents and not just fly-by-night travelers they had to learn a whole new system of life. Italy moves at a different pace than England and they had to reset their very way of being. They also wanted to get as much art viewing in as possible, so they had to juggle when to move, where to move, and what to see next. Cusk also struggled with feelings of guilt for taking her children away from the life they knew. Would her children understand she did this partly for them?

This book was a wonderful, complex read. It was about so much more than a trip or art; it was about life. Cusk will be describing something ordinary and easily slip into the dreamy world of the mind then back into the bright, harsh reality. Like the art she hunts for, her observations dig under the surface of life and bring up pearls of wisdom. Read it and escape into this book that is a piece of art in its own right.