Rachel Cusk - why is she having to support her dh following her divorce?

[mrsreplicant]

Sorry to be naive - have never done divorce myself. She seems to be saying that because her dh gave up his job to look after the dc, she will always have to support him now that they are divorced/ing. [?] From what I read, it sounds like she will have to support him even after the dc are grown up.

Can anyone elaborate?

Foxinsocks, I did say I was naive on the issue of divorce! However I do know several women who sacrificed their careers and got shit deals compared to Mr Cusk. My understanding from (limited) experience was that money was handed over till the dc ended full-time education. After that, women I know have been turfed out of the family house they'd been allowed to live in with the dc, money ended, that's it mate.

I bet her ex does hate her even more now. If I were him I would have slapped on an injunction to stop publication of the details of my private life and the private lives of my dc. Very surprised he hasn't done so.

Thanks Izzy

I thought her A lifes work was APPALLING. More self absorbed bullshit that in part was so baffling as to be almost unintelligible!

I see Rachel Cusk as a highly lyrical, original writer who writes v. much about her inner experience. I like her work.

Maybe he could not afford the injunction these things aren't cheap.

Omg Rachel fucking Cusk gives me the RAGE.

Still, yet another chance to wheel out my favourite ever Digested Read from The Guardian. Who knew men could be so bitchy!

I expect RC's ex is breathing a sigh of relief

I just wonder what kind of ego you must have to imagine that the world would be so very interested in your marriage break up that you had to write a book on it. And why a publisher would want to publish it.

Bibbity how in hell does that shit get published?!

No one ever asks this if it is the man. In fact one of MN favourites is to make sure the woman gets all she is entitled to and to make sure she gets a ring on her finger to protect her in exactly this sort of situation so why shouldn't he?

Poor them mrsreplicant. I guess being a lawyer he knew exactly how to get the right advice too!

What I don't get about Rachel Cusk is how life seems a constant surprise to her. Reading that article it's like she never even knew they had problems. A lot of her writing seems like that. Almost like everything that happens in real life is a complete and utter shock that she didn't forsee. I mean you just hope for her sake that at some point she might gain some foresight .

Foxy - that is exactly, to a word, how I felt about her book after she had her first child - was it A Life's Work?

Seems obvious to me that she either

a) had no friends who had given birth before her
b) did have friends who had given birth before her but didn't take a scrap of interest in what they were going through or
c) had no friends full stop

She doesn't personally attack her H in the article as far as I can see, more ruminates on her current situation. For me, she has always been a master of subtley, reflecting on conflicting thoughts and her writing often has a dreamy quality (esp. see her book on travelling in Italy), but I see I am a minority in her defence, so I shall leave it there.

Lol bibbity that's exactly what I thought. It was like she'd been isolated on an outer Hebridean island with no TV and no contact with child bearing women her whole life.

I read that article yesterday - was it Rachel Cusk who wrote that excrutiating article about her house being hit by a hurricane and oranges being vomited across the kitchen floor?

I don't even know what she was trying to say in the article about alimony etc - she comes across as very tiresome.

Ah Jane, I don't want to attack her. No divorce is easy especially when there are children involved. It just all seems to happen out the blue for her and smack her in the face.

I think she is quite lucky she got the kids. I imagine if the sexes were reversed and it was a SAHM then they would automatically expect to get the kids. I wonder if the courts still prefer to leave the dcs with mum even if the dad is a SAHD.

I have no issue with her paying her husband what he is entitled to, as I wouldnt if she had been the SAHP and he the earner.

But I would like to know what her exes POV is.

I had to actually throw away A Life's Work. Into the actual bin. The thought of putting it back into circulation by donating it to a charity shop and running the risk of some other poor pregnant soon-to-be-first-time-mother reading it was not something I was prepared to have on my conscience.

I could only bear to skim the article about her divorce but the gist of her argument seemed to be that she had inalienable rights "as a mother" and that therefore it was totally unfair to share custody / assets despite the fact that her partner has been a SAHD for most of their children's life. I'd like to see her try and make that stand up in AIBU.

I dislike her writing and although I've never met her I suspect I wouldn't like her very much either. She seems to have an absolutely limitless capacity to feel sorry for herself.

Weirdly the self-same article is reproduced in Stella magazine with the Sunday Telegraph today. It's just cut and pasted slightly better. Happily all the xyz unintelligible stuff from the Guardian piece has gone.

If it were me, I wouldn't want her to be writing anything at all about me as her ex, or - more importantly - my dc. However I do see that he bought into that from the get-go.

Bibbity, that Digested Read is so good! I've just spit soup all over the keyboard.

I presume the new book has been carefully checked by lawyers to make sure that her ex-husband (or anyone else) can't do her for libel - the first edition of The Last Supper ended up being recalled and pulped because of what she wrote about a real person in it.

She also didn't exactly endear herself to a lot of people with some of her previous books, eg Arlington Park, which had some very thinly disguised mothers from her children's school in it.

(disclaimer: I have never met her, but she is a friend-of-a-friend so I have heard quite a bit of the background, and I have to say I feel rather sorry for her husband, and anyone who has managed to stay friends with her)

So relieved that I wasn't the only person to have:

a: wondered why Mrs C was left supporting Mr C
b: found it a really boring article.

There's a lot to be said for not airing your dirty washing in public or in the case of Rachel Cusk not writing about it as it's soooooo boring!

Love the Digested Read, Bibbity.

Arlington Park was one of the worst books I've ever read. In fact, I think I either started a thread on it, or contributed to a "worst ever book" thread, only to be told that RC was a MNer. I hate her writing style, and she's so self-absorbed and - frankly - boring. I can understand how that Guardian article got commissioned, but I can't for the life of me understand how it actually ended up being published.

What I don't get about Rachel Cusk is how life seems a constant surprise to her

when you have your head that far up your own backside reality comes as a shock

"The children belong to me ? this was not the kind of rudimentary phrase-making I generally went in for." ha ha ha ha, if only! That digested read was brilliant. A little rudimentary phrase making really would not go amiss in contrast to that.

Grumpla, I felt the same way about The Temporary but had to return it to the library. It was full of nasty crude cliches about women in offices being lazy and stupid and generic, dressed up in all this annoying circumlocution to make her snobbery and hatefulness and lack of perception look like erudition.

That photo is the posh up-own-arse version of the "This woman is SAD" photo, where she has been banned from a club because too old to be all bondagey. So it has its own humour value in a lack lustre, posy simmonds sort of way.

And yet again, I really quite slavishly agree with Grumpla.

Am also wetting my pants at the idea that journalism is well-paid. I only wish.