Re: Rachel Cusk's Aftermath, the book NOT the article in the Guardian

[AllQuietOnThePippisFront]

Now, is there someone who will agree with me that the extract in the Guardian did not do it justice at all?
With that i mean for example that from its editing it appears far more a slagging off of exh when in fact there us very little of it in the book.
To me the book is a much more humble affair that the article implied. She focuses on herself, on the ambivalence of feeling, rather than her husband's shortcomings or faults. And why this concentration on herself is deemed selfcentred i would never know - it is one way of looking at things, certainly, not the only way. (similarly with the book about motherhood, i doubt she was pretending to give a universal view!). There are plenty of great book that take this angle but are not described as such.

Amyway what i wanted to know was if there is anybody who likes the book despite having not been keem on the article. Frankly the article made me not want to read the book but now i am glad i did for it is a different story all together.

(puts the helmet on in prep to the vitriol that RC's attracts)

well?

That's interesting. I will put it on my Amazon list then. A Life's Work really resonated with me so I wanted to like this one but the Guardian piece was so dreadful it put me off.

Have not read A life's work but now I will as from what I read it will def resonate with me - I wished I had known about it then.

this one def resonates with me, sadly, but I was completely put off by the article. On an interview she herself says she was appalled by the guardian's excerpt (sp?) for she could not recognise her book in it. I am trying to find the article.

I really enjoyed A life's work and I def shared lots of feelings she described. She usually attracts lots of scorn on MN, she's described as being self absorbed, egoistic etc, all sins a mother shouldn't with a capital M shouldn't commit .

To be honest, what put me off re her new book was my failed attempt at reading one of her other novel, which I found pretty boring.

sorry, there are too many shouldn't in my sentence!

Hello Franca!

Oh is that you????

I really enjoyed reading a Life's work, even if I read it when ds was about 8 months old, so probably in a different life's stage iyswim... Read it, let me know what you think.

have not been here for aaaaageeeees but have ishoooooos I need to discuss and help with and advice and someone to hold my hands and MN never fails on that front...

Have you read The Millstone? I love it, loved it, loved it!

Absolutely, there is always some good advise on MN.

If I can help in anyway, just give me a shout, btw...

ANd now I am worried you didn't want me to see your post! (but I can't resist a Rachel Cusk thread )

Yes, I have read it, I don't remember if it was after you recommended it, or not. I loved it too, such a wonderful book!

If I didnt wanted you to see it I'd have namechanged. It is no shameful thing really, just very very sad, as you can guess. But such is life. It is no secret, or actually it is more of a secret than it should be really, that's the problem.

Coming to London soon? email me if you want to discuss things privately, I don't mind.

With Rachel Cusk on the title I was expecting a lot of angry and insulting posts ...

Maybe it's too early in the morning, maybe the anti Rachel Cusk brigade will arrive later...

Yes, will email you

I haven't read it but I thought A Life's Work was brutally honest and hugely compelling. I heard her being interviewed on Women's Hour (haven't read the Grauniad article but I can imagine the stance it takes). I suspect RC is a bit like Marmite - you either really appreciate her painful candour or you feel she's navel-gazing and hugely self-absorbed.

re the "navel-gazing and hugely self-absorbed" definition of her and her books, is it because of the subject matter do you think.
I can think of another book The Long Goodbye, a marvelllous book by meghan O'Rourke, which could also be included in that def but because it is about the death of a mother it doesnt, as if it is ok to be self-obsessed about once pain in front of death but not when the pain is caused by motherhood, self-instigated divorce, or even depression and break-up as in Emma Forrest's Your Voice in My Head (same anger toward her as RC's). I do not understand why pain is compartmentalised and put on a scale. One of the characteristic of severe pain is that you cannot think or feel nothing else (think childbirth LOL) regardless for what causes it. The fact that RC manages to express this state of being (locked into this pain, obsessed by it etc) is an achievement.
Of course not everyone will agree with her in what can cause such pain but that is not what she is after, she does not pretend to talk of the universal.

Absolutely it's connected to the subject matter. There is a huge taboo around writing about emotional pain connected to motherhood IMO. I suspect there is an undercurrent of people feeling it's 'unnatural' (and therefore very frightening)

nb I'm talking about motherhood re Aftermath too as that was what she was talking about on the radio, the difficulties of relationships unravelling when there are children involved

This is what she has to say about her book.

Thanks, that's really interesting. I don't know whether to read the 'other' article!

i agree Patty, it seems to be taboo talking of emotuonal pain related to motherhood. It is a tiny bit better when it?s pnd, otherwise negativeor mixed feelings are considered ?navel gazing?

Patty if you mean the guardian's one about aftermath no don't. It is made up of the only bits of info about her husband and make her look like a pshicomum/wife. Read the book first if so. Some of the review are good.
Having said that being the subject matter what it is i wonder if it may not ring a bell in such a resonant way as it did to me unless you are going through what a similar experience. Like the one about motherhood, would have meant anything ti me pre-children?

Another great book about motherhood etc is The monster within. A psychoanalitical analysis on anbivalence with literary references.

It's one of the reasons I haven't bought the book - it's not something I've experienced or will be ever likely to (if that sounds smug, it's not meant to, I'm a single mother by choice).

I first read a Life's Work before becoming a mother and found it quite shocking and rather distasteful if I'm honest but reread it (during long breastfeeding sessions!) and it really resonated. It made me realise how much I'd internalised an idealised view of motherhood.