Life of M by Rachel Cusk (HC)

From the critically acclaimed author of the Outline trilogy, an irresistible novel of fame, power, beauty, and truth―and a blazing renovation of the form.

The movie star M is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child.

With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away.

Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M’s life in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths―about the very experience of living―might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture?

In this astonishing novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for these truths without ever swerving away into self-deception. Her pursuit leads us across olive groves and beaches, behind the smoked windows of limousines, and through beautiful cities considered the great masterpieces of civilization. And at every turn, Cusk contemplates the cost of this beauty―and what we might lose when we are hypnotized by it.

REVIEWS

“Life of M, Cusk’s newest book, takes autofiction’s familiar dance of authorial ambiguity and shakes it into something odd and unsettling . . . In its final pages, it performs an astonishing rug pull that makes you wonder whether the book actually has been an autobiography all along, interested in exposing not M but the knotty and unpalatable process of Cusk’s art . . . Deeply fascinating.”―Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic

“With the release of her novel, Life of M, comes a new level of Cuskian austerity . . . Life of M [meditates] purely, often brilliantly, upon consciousness itself . . . I will never not want to discover what Cusk is doing.”―Joan Frank, The Boston Globe

“A terse, singular meditation on time, fame, innocence and self-creation.”―The New York Times

PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover Edition
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 978-0374618384
Pages: 192