An Acclaimed Novelist’s New Book Is Supposedly a “Literary Assassination” of Natalie Portman. I’ve Read It. It’s Something Much Weirder.

Books Is Rachel Cusk’s Life of M Actually About Natalie Portman? The acclaimed novelist’s new book is supposedly about her famous friend. I’ve read it. It’s something else entirely. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Laura Miller? July 31, 20265:45 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Images via Anna Pocaro/Variety via Getty Images and Macmillan Publishers. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Do you want to know the real scuttlebutt about Natalie Portman and Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Life of M, the book that is supposedly based on Portman herself? You can read about the ”uncanny” similarities between Portman and Cusk’s title character, M, all over the internet, and about how the novel apparently amounts to a ”literary assassination,” so I won’t summarize those points here. Since the rumors about M’s inspiration have made their way from publishing-circle dinner parties to online hearsay, commenters have barely been able to contain their thrilled titillation over the idea that an acclaimed novelist is dishing the dirt on her movie-star friend, a supporter who has previously recommended Cusk’s titles. But, for those hungry for juicy morsels of gossip within the pages of the novel, I have disappointing news: The truth about Life of M is that the book isn’t really about Natalie Portman at all. Cusk is an experimental novelist, one known for incorporating elements from her own life into her fiction, and Life of M, which comes out on Aug. 25, is particularly tricksterish piece of work in that respect. From the beginning of the novel, Cusk hints broadly at the dubious veracity of her (unnamed) narrator’s account of M’s life. In the first sentence, the narrator recalls telling M that “I was thinking of writing her autobiography.” An autobiography is, of course, written by its own subject, and since the narrator isn’t offering to work as M’s ghostwriter but to produce the book entirely on her own, the statement is nonsensical. M finds it funny. “Would you make it all up?” she asks her friend. That’s the first clue that the novel’s initial, scandal-greedy readers have failed to pick up on. The first chapter of Life of M provides some background on the friendship between M and the narrator, in which M relates some of the bizarre and lamentable aspects of her fame and profession, including a starring role in a film at the age of 13 that “ended her childhood.” (This scans with Portman’s feature-film debut in the 1994 movie Léon: The Professional, directed by the notorious creep Luc Besson.) M tells the narrator that she prefers to use what power her fame has given her to make her life as “normal” as possible. Nevertheless, when the pair arrange to meet for coffee in a hotel garden, only to find the garden closed for the winter, the staff readily reopens it just for them. “This was how people and things behaved around her,” the narrator observes. “Reality became malleable, was always giving way and changing its rules.” Life of M By Rachel Cusk. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Slate receives a commission when you purchase items using the links on this page. Thank you for your support. Until the final chapter of the novel, M and the narrator won’t meet again. Instead, Life of M alternates between scenes from the lives of both the narrator and “M.” That’s “M” in quotes because by the time the reader gets to that last chapter, it has become increasingly apparent that the passages describing M’s life are, for the most part, mere speculation on the narrator’s part. After the first chapter, the narration switches from first-person singular to first-person plural, as the narrator moves through obsessions familiar to readers of Cusk’s previous novels: frustration over the inauthenticity of contemporary life, the instability of identity, and a sort of neurasthenic aestheticism that makes simple activities like going to a museum distressing if the other visitors respond to the art in a too-boisterous manner. At first, the “we” in these chapters seems to be the narrator and her partner, who has a health crisis at the beginning of the book. Later, the “we” apparently refers to a solitary woman, or perhaps two women—namely the narrator and the imaginary version of M she has concocted for the M passages in the novel. These passages almost always begin with the words “It is a” followed by the name of a setting: a brasserie, a posh members-only spa, a Mediterranean villa, a wooden schooner, a corporate conference room, an acting class. These settings are described in minute detail, descriptions that occasionally dip into clichés right out of the most voyeuristic travel writing or promotional brochure: “richly embroidered curtains” in a stately home or a minimalist interior design that “asserts simplicity as the ultimate luxury.” Compared to the attention the novel lavishes on these settings, the scenes that play out in them tend to be sketched rather than dramatized. M, for unknown reasons, submits to being scolded by some guy for unspecified shortcomings. She gets a massage with an actress friend. A journalist interviews her in a trendy restaurant in the unnamed European city where she lives. She attends an art opening for an artist she once patronized. None of these scenes have anything to do with or even mention M’s intimate relationships. Her children are referred to glancingly, and no marriage or romantic partnership ever comes up. As gossip goes, even if these passages were really about Portman, who tends to keep her personal life private, they’re pretty thin gruel. The narrator of Life of M mostly seems interested in M’s hopeless desire to make contact with “reality,” her unsureness about who she truly is, the impossibility of “sincerity,” and her abiding sense that she is mere performing herself. Anyone who prides herself on the refinement of her taste as much as Cusk does would know that making observations like these about an actor is banal, as is a line comparing M’s home in the city to a “big doll house, with her as the doll inside it.” And anyone who has read even a little of Cusk’s previous work will recognize that these concerns map suspiciously closely to Cusk’s own preoccupations with artificiality. The novel’s final chapter confirms those suspicions. Suddenly, the narration reverts to first person, as if the narrator were snapping out of a reverie in which her own identity had merged with M’s. M has read the “project” and declares it “hurtful,” complaining that not only had she never been to any of the places so painstakingly described in the chapters we have just read, but she has also never done any of the things the narrator has reported. The narrator seems surprised that anyone would think otherwise. “The character was invented by me,” she explains. So if that character has any faults, “then it’s me that it’s true of.” “I don’t know anything about your private life,” the narrator goes on. “I don’t know anything about your character.” She hadn’t even googled M, just “watched your films, like anyone can,” a statement that, upon reflecting on the preceding chapters, seems perfectly accurate. Fantasizing a version of M based on her movie roles allowed the narrator to “go and live in someone else,” the way she imagines an actor like M does in her own work. Ironically, the character she created to live in had exactly the same problems Cusk’s main characters usually have, only with more money and power. The final sentence in Life of M is so bizarre and disorienting it throws even these revelations into chaos. As the writer departs, M stops her at the door, announcing there’s something she’s always wanted to ask her. Then M smiles “warmly and almost goofily,” and says, “This might sound stupid, but I’ve been wondering. Are you a guy or a girl?” Since Rachel Cusk is quite obviously the latter, what can this possibly mean? Only that Cusk is screwing with us and perhaps suggesting that not only is M not Natalie Portman, but the narrator isn’t even Cusk. Life of M is a narrative hall of mirrors that only a fool would confuse with a thinly veiled roman à clef about a celebrity. To my mind, only one true mystery remains: Was Portman in on it? Is she just pretending to be offended for a lark, or in a bid to drive interest in her friend’s book? As of this writing, neither woman has made a public statement on the matter, but I’m not sure if we can believe either one of them when they do. Get the best of culture Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more. Books Celebrities