Has anyone read "A Life's Work" by Rachel Cusk?

[Greensleeves]

I've read it once and am reading it again. I found it immensely powerful, and it rings unnervingly true in lots of places.

Anyone else read it?

utterly fab-- the book I wish I'd written and am immensely glad I read.

The bit about Emma's Diary makes me pmsl. The rest of it makes me want to wail with recognition.

Yes. Read it about 3 years ago. She's a wonderful writer, but it was especially powerful as I had experienced many of the same thoughts/feelings she describes - though of course, I don't have the ability to express them nearly so accurately and concisely.

Have you ever read any of her other books?

That's exactly how I felt. If I had her fluency and her skill I would have written precisely the same things. It made me scream internally. And snort with laughter. It's a masterpiece.

I've not read any other book which captures the depth and the desperation of those feelings around birth/motherhood. It was like a bucket of cold water reading it for the first time.

ooh - ooh - hold back -

no I LOATHE this book. No I don't. Well, I partly do. It sends me into conniptions, anyway. She misquoted Emma's diary (by one word, but it completely changed the meaning). And says at one point that she's not used to the requirements of non-fiction. Also it's all absolutely and completely awful for two solid years or whatever, and then suddenly 'my second daughter' - when did that happen?

And she's rude about Oxford - or perhaps I just assume it's Oxford as it's very familiar, and I feel hurt that she didn't like it -

Yes it's very well written. Dammit.

I found it profoundly annoying and kept wanting to shake her and say 'look, sort yourself out, you've got PND, and get some proper childcare instead of wafting about putting ads in the local newsagent for any passing perve to perve over, and just stop feeling so damn important'.

Im bidding on a copy on Ebay now greeny

sounds amazing

I didn't read it, but I read about it and it sounded very disturbing. Some of the quotes...I worry about these sort of books, because they seem to normalise feelings of rage and hatred towards one's children...it really isn't natural or ok to be feeling like that with any frequency. I hope that people who do would seek help. :(

I don't think "look, sort yourself out" is particularly pertinent or helpful advice to give someone suffering from PND. And a bit of fellow feeling, well-expressed, is a real boost to other women going through something overwhelming and painful which they are unable to describe adequately or understand, and which makes them feel totally isolated.

Each to their own then, MI

I really enjoyed the misery of the book even though I also wanted to shake her sometimes for self-obsession.

but she's hardly the first to write about this. Lots of women have written about feelings of maternal ambivalence, rage and hatred. Adrienne Rich wrote about this very powerfully. Rachel Cusk is a bit irritating for seeming to think she's the first one to have had a baby and found it hard.

I read it and can't remember it AT ALL. Oops!

I think it's possibly more helpful than letting them write a book about how much they hated having children, and being lionised for it, Greeny

I think I've read this. Is it the one with the black-and-white picture on the front? It sounds like the kind of thing I would have read in a post-baby panic, so I guess I'm with www and can't remember it

I thought Kate Fige's Life After Birth was an excellent "Ohmygodthat'sexactlyhowIfeel" book (I may have recommended this once or twice before...)

But lots of us did have that sort of vague, HV-suggested form of PND, and she describes the insidiousness of it so perfectly. There's the feeling that because you're educated and well-supported you're doing fine, and then you realise that your responses and instincts are just way, way off and you're in an emotional landscape for which you just don't have a map, and actually you suspect that you're desperately lost. She described the PND I recognised. Couldn't identify with it as described by my jolly HV at all.

Ummm - I didn't take it as self obsessed, or think that she was putting herself forward as the first person to have a baby.

For me, she expressed beautifully and accurately feelings I was unable to articulate - or perhaps didn't feel it was acceptable to articulate. It was a huge relief to read another woman's experience as I was experiencing many of the same things. I didn't feel nearly so freakish or isolated after I read her book.

Have you read it, Franny? I didn't read it as being about hatred for one's child at all. I wouldn' have felt much familiarity with it if I had.:) However it does deal with feelings of grief/fear/frustration and rage, which I think ARE normal in pregnancy/childbirth/early motherhood. The experience of women who suffer birth trauma and PND is made a million times worse by the fact that they often feel alone, abnormal and guilty about these feelings. I found that her book helped me with that. I didn't find it hateful or self-indulgent, I found much of it very tender and more prepared to deal with the visceral and complex nature of the experience rather than pretending that it's all so natural it's a breeze. It's not, for a lot of women.

No, as I said, I didn't read it. I don't think I could, so I can't comment any further. It worries me, though.

And what a blessed relief from all those soft-focus, pastel-clad women in the pregnancy books of the time. When I was pregnant for the first time 12 years ago I thought that the rest of my life would be lived out in shades of dove grey and peach and an attitude of calm acceptance. Having a baby seemed to involved undergoing some Stepford-wife type transformation into a simpering girl in a pinafore. Cusk's book didn't come out for another 6 years or so, but it was the first time I saw maternity portrayed in anything like a realistic, or intelligent way.

Snafu, absolutely re Kate Figes, I remember that. Yes, it is the one with the black and white bottle on it, see, I remember the cover but not the book, message there somewhere!

www (and at my apostrophe shocker)

Hmmmm: what I felt was that in fact she was universalising her own experience, and simultaneously not considering that she might have anything as earthily common as PND. She made me feel very, er, lumpen about my own misery over having a small baby.

Yep, lumpen versus wafty, that's how I felt.

Tell you who I did like - Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott.

There's a solidity to Kate Figes' book. Which I read in pregnancy and shuddered at, and then read with a small baby and grasped in delight to my overflowing norks.

I have a friend who was havng a v hard time with her children and gave the Figes book to a friend who was pregant accidentally in an 'I implore you to reconsider' kind of way!

Mind you, all I can remember about the Figes book is that I liked it so who am I to comment on anything here? Brain like mush, that's me.

Haven't read Kate Figes, I might try and get it now!

Oh Greeny, read something written by someone who likes their children, something joyous

Or write it yourself.