LIFE OF M

A fictional movie star’s “autobiography,” written by a fictional author, muses on the nature of reality and identity.

When the unnamed narrator tells M that she—or is it he?—wants to write the actress’ autobiography, M (who is definitely female) responds, “Would you just make it up?” On Page 1, readers are alerted that little is certain here, as the slippery text moves between M’s invented life and the experiences of a “we” who could be the narrator and a partner who just got out of the hospital—or maybe not. A star from childhood, M has never had an ordinary life. She prides herself on performing everyday tasks like picking up her kids at school, but “her cultivation of normality is an attempt to retrieve a lost inner world.” Without ever mentioning social media, Cusk suggests that we are increasingly consumed by images, with no sense of who we really are; when M tells someone that only in her personal life does she feel like she’s acting, the angry reaction is, “Everyone feels that…and to an extent it’s the fault of actors like you.” Cusk’s spare, deliberately flat prose is as sharp as ever: A fashion model “occupies some vague atmosphere of her own that seems to cushion her like a blister against a life of constant intrusion”; movie stars’ bodies “have a kind of plasticity or neutrality about them, as though their mortal element had been removed.” There’s a whiff of privilege about all this, and occasional glimpses of homeless people simply underscore the rarified world Cusk’s characters inhabit and the highly abstract nature of their reflections. Dropped into the narrative without context, sentences like “We have come to understand that our memories are meaningless” teeter on the brink of pretentiousness. There’s no question about Cusk’s brilliant way with words, but this novel lacks the connection to a wide range of human experience that distinguishes her best work.

Accomplished but airless.