Here's some info about the lawyer/photographer husband:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Clarke_(photographer)
I'm pretty much alone in this but I enjoyed the excerpt. I've changed my mind about Cusk. I've never read her novels but the articles I read by her seemed very self-absorbed. Then I read A Life's Work, and was amazed. It was the most honest and, to me, truthful description of motherhood I'd ever read and what is more, it was laugh-aloud funny in places. That was the last thing I expected.
So I think I will read this new book. I don't think she is like Julie Myerson and not at all like Liz Jones. She's not writing about her children, she's writing about herself and how she feels. A lot of people seem to assume that because she describes feeling in a particular way that she is defending herself but it seems to me that she is acknowledging that her feelings are contradictory and inconsistent. Isn't that true of all of us? Don't we all have thoughts and feelings that go against the way we think of ourselves? It's just that most of us hide them rather than make them public. She's obviously interested in her own reactions (which I realise is a cardinal sin for a lot of people) but I don't think she's vain or self-aggrandising in the way that, say, Liz Jones is.
I also don't have a problem with difficult words. If you don't know a word, look it up. We are grown-ups, after all.