Brilliant or boring? The verdict on Rachel Cusk’s new novel

Reading Rachel Cusk’s Life of M is a destabilising experience. The pages shadow you; the strange discomfort of their atmosphere lingers – as intended, surely, as most specifically intended. This is Cusk, after all, and her writing is no one’s comfort zone.

Life of M has provoked much debate “in real life”, fed by the supposedly furious reactions of the famous actress whom “M” is allegedly based on, with entertainment channels thrilling about a feud between the writer and the Hollywood superstar. Outrage is performed, and it’s VERY EXCITING; more stories probe the line (maybe it’s more of a demilitarised zone) between what’s acceptable and what’s not when turning a famous life into fiction. The actress’ friends are said to be incandescent; others call out Cusk’s novel as a “cheap publicity stunt”, as if this were a brand-new form of intrusion, an unprecedented liberty taken. In other words, it’s difficult to read Life of M on the page alone, to experience it without the subsonic thrumming of this parallel storyline creating and/or revealing a whole other dimension to the novel.

It took me a while to finish. After an enthusiastic dive into the familiar spartan beauty of Cusk’s sentences I found myself reacting with a mix of frustration, incredulity, boredom and confusion. I resisted reading for a few days while I unravelled my reluctance. Then I realised that the interesting dance was taking place off the page, that the novel was a commentary and a mirror, a performance, a provocation and a participation, all at once.

We are warned in the very first paragraph: “Would you just make it up? she said.” Many scenes do feel “made up” in the sense that they feel clichéd, like the work of a lazy writer skimming the well-worn surface of things – the fashion model in the bookstore stood out as a clanger. Other scenes have descriptions of tables and glass tumblers and flowers that have a flatness to them, a banality, almost a Dick-and-Jane quality: “They are filled with books but also with other things, perhaps put there in haste to clear the room: [a list follows].”

The reminder that Cusk’s writing can be electrifying bursts in occasionally. Describing an art exhibition that M attends, there is a sudden rush of blood and life in the writing. The warning is there: Cusk is a fantastic, whip-smart writer who doesn’t ask to be liked, and we underestimate her at our peril. It remains, though, that Life of M presents more surface: the occasional descriptions of ugliness as some form of antidote fail to fragment the power of “seems”. The theatre director who chooses to pay no attention to his appearance as a statement of his power opens a small and interesting thematic door that the narrator fails to walk through. Indeed, in their brittle self-regard, the narrator resembles M to the point that we almost have a conflation. (This resonates if the narrator is indeed “making it all up”.)

Complicity runs through the work. The novel begins with first-person narration, and the ground seems solid.