Rachel Cusk on the hostile reaction to A Life's Work

[MyEye]

here

I love you sobernow
and thanks for that lovely link too, Rosa

ai gree wiht twig

"heart-shaped apples like the apples in a medieval tapestry"

"her sister, older by 15 months, whose abundant hair exactly matched the electrifying palette of autumn in the pleasure gardens that year"

Good gawd. She could be that woman whose wibblings on the damage to the interior decor after the north London Tornado so amused so many here about a year ago. (I'm sure someone can link to that... "clementines vomited across the floor", anyone?)

Arf. As it happens, I know the person who was her editor for Saving Agnes and they did edit down the original manuscript by a serious amount. God only knows what it must have been like before.

I think it is in Mumsnet Classics, UQD.

Have just read that link. I don't know whether or not she has anything worthwhile to say - hidden beneath the flowery waffle. I hope so, as her writing is bloody hard work for the reader.

"It was, perhaps, our isolation - idyllic though it was - that sealed these events in a profound melancholy from which I subsequently found myself unable to escape."

(Could we have a mumsnet competition to rewrite the above sentence? The most concise and elegant wins a prize?)

Note to Rachel Cusk
Read Chekhov

Swedes, how about: "I was living in the middle of nowhere and went a bit nuts."?

RC DOES read Chekhov Swedes, read the link to the book club article
Oh ho, ho, ho

Swededs my effort is ' I was miserable in the country.'

MrsS -

Very good entries so far.

My entry No. 1 (I think we can be allowed 3 each) is

"I missed Harvey Nichols a lot."

"the country smells funny"

sorry am still LOLing at 'I missed Harvey Nichols a lot"

I think the original article speaks alot of sense about the 'myth of motherhood' which cannot be shattered or questioned and which when women admit to ambivalence or worse, about this they are shunned and attacked, not by men, but by other women.

Some comments on this thread display this.

MN quite often displays this, and I think it needs saying. More often.

But then read I her book club article. Good God, she is such a head up her own arse intellctual glory hunter, it makes me want to never agree with a word she says!!!

She comes across as deeply unplaeasnt, but not because she struggled with motherhood.

While we're on the subject of awful writing, can anyone from p'edant's' corner explain when and why it's correct to use 'upon' instead of 'on'.

This is one of the ways RC irritates me. Perhaps she's right and I'm not p'edan't'ic enough.

Haven't read Cusk, but had violent reactions against both Helen Simpson's Hey Yeah Right Get A Life and Kate Figes's Life After Birth, both of which fall into the 'whinging bloody git' camp of mother-lit. However, I take MrsMattie's point that this sort of thing can be very useful/moving for some readers.

I think one underlying reason for my finding these books irritating is that I suspect their writers of believing that

happy mother of young children = low-IQ fool

whilst

unhappy mother of young children = tremendously clever bluestocking

which is a line of thought with which I take issue. However, I might be being chippy on this point.

I didn't like it for lots of reasons given below. At the time I had just had my own precious first born and her book really really really annoyed me. It was very much of the 'I'm the only one ever to have had a child' camp .

As a much better alternative - Anne Enright's has much more humour and common sense.

Anne Enright's book is great, she comes across as being so normal, it's refreshing.

OT a bit, but did anybody read Anne Enright's book about motherhood?

Also a bit loop the loop at the start but not quite so bad, plus Anne E over-analyses everything, not just motherhood.

oh sorry belgo. great minds etc.

It was Niceglasses actually

ghastly, whining purple prose ...reminds me of uber pretentious 6th form wannabes. I heard Myleene Klass just wrote a book on how to be up the duff too. Isn't literature great?

And Jules Oliver wrote one too!!

I seem to have my MN invisibility cloak on again. Am I too far off topic? should I start another thread? Or can someone enlighten me about on/upon?

TIA...or not, - no pressure, you understand...

I liked Anne Enright too.
I always laugh when I remember the bit where she says that she preferred using a sling because she thought pushing a buggy made her look like a heroin addict. Overstated, but I get what she means