Fiction sleuths are obsessed with the idea that the book, Life of M, is a flagrant riff on the actor’s life. And despite being a firm Cusk fan, Portman is reportedly not happy
Life of M, the latest book by the critically acclaimed author Rachel Cusk, is being billed by its publisher, Faber, as a “blazing interrogation of fame, power, beauty and truth” – and openly alleged as a thinly veiled portrait of Natalie Portman. For weeks before publication, speculation has swirled that its movie-star main character is based on Portman – to her reported displeasure.
With the book out this week, readers and critics alike are judging it as literature and gossip. Don’t want to read it yourself, but want to have an opinion? Here’s your crib sheet.
There’s little reading between the lines with Cusk’s movie-star main character M, “one of the most recognisable faces of our time”, who is frequently identifiable as Portman in all but name. On page three, M describes her experiences as a child star, acting in a film that “immediately brought her childhood to an end”. Several details tally with Léon: The Professional, Portman’s first film role (she was cast at 11 and filmed until she was 13), most obviously its sexualised relationship between an adult man and a young girl. M also says her parents requested some scenes be cut from the script, and that she was bullied at school after the film came out – both details Portman has shared publicly. Later come references to M’s “starring role in a film about a young girl chosen for the starring role in a ballet” (describing Black Swan down to specific scenes).
If you pick up Life of M expecting explosive revelations about one of Hollywood’s most private and put-together stars, you’ll be disappointed. More than recognisably Portman, the novel is essentially Cusk, with her trademark roaming, disembodied narration and clinical gaze – which, despite the title, only intermittently turns to M. Scenes from the fictional actor’s rarefied existence are interspersed with the narrator’s observations of modern urban life and dense descriptions of rooms, and the chairs within those rooms. A tell-all, it ain’t.
Both Cusk and Portman reside in Paris, seemingly the setting of Life of M, and have crossed paths. In a 2023 GQ interview, Portman said she was “starstruck” at meeting Cusk: “I get really in awe… writing beautifully is just, like, the greatest gift.” Portman has also selected Cusk’s novels for her book club twice, praising “the way she disrupts form and the conventions of storytelling”, and once declared her “of course, a genius”. But, in the lead-up to Life of M, sources have downplayed reports of a friendship, with a report in the Daily Mail stating that Cusk and Portman had only “seen each other a few times” around Paris, while sources told Vanity Fair they never had “much of a relationship”.
M is frequently described as beautiful and charming, but her inner world is chilly; she is untouched by depression and love alike, incapable of “total sincerity” and impeded by celebrity. Indeed, M’s efforts to be “normal” seem contrived; at a dinner party thrown by non-famous friends, she wonders “how they survive in this minuscule space”. Journalist Leaf Arbuthnot wrote in the Telegraph that: “The impression is of an author pulling the limbs off a person one by one, as a child might do to an insect.” Sources claiming to be close to Portman have expressed outrage on her behalf, saying she bears no resemblance to the out-of-touch, dispassionate M. From the Mail: “She is far from a diva, she is a quiet bookworm … This is a gross violation of her code. She believes women’s bonds should be nurtured, and not manipulated for commerce.”
This would not be the first time Portman has been made a non-consenting muse. Back in 2014, the author Jonathan Safran Foer was widely speculated to have ended his marriage (to fellow author Nicole Krauss) over his crush on Portman, who allegedly rebuffed him. Two years later, the New York Times’ T magazine published Portman and Safran Foer’s excruciatingly self-conscious emails. Their correspondence became so legendary in the New York literary scene that it ended up inspiring a 2023 Off-Broadway play, about a Pulitzer-winning novelist who develops a crush on a glamorous actress (played by Katie Holmes). As Vanity Fair concluded, Portman has form in being “thrust into other people’s narratives”.
Over weeks of gossip about Life of M, Cusk and her team have remained quiet, leading to accusations that they were “certainly leaning in” to the speculation to help drive sales. But when Cusk was interviewed by the New York Times last week, she said she was finding it “very stressful”. She refused to comment on whether she had discussed the novel with Portman, and said that whether she was the inspiration for M was “not really the point”. “Once you start to pull on that thread, it would unravel the whole thing … The book explains itself and defends itself pretty comprehensively.”
This is far from Cusk’s first brush with controversy over drawing inspiration for her books from real life. The first print run of her 2009 novel The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy had to be withdrawn and pulped by its publisher after individuals recognised themselves in Cusk’s portrayal and threatened legal action. In 2017, artist Damian Barr claimed he was the basis for Julian, a character in Cusk’s novel Transit, writing on Facebook: “Cusk’s veil of fiction is thin. Thinner than a thin thing.”
The reviews are, as they say, “mixed”. The Guardian declared Life of M “a book to admire enormously, but not one to love”. The New York Times despaired at Cusk’s “ponderous pronouncements”, where the reader “might want to fling Life of M aside and instead fire up Life of Brian”. The New Yorker damned the “tedious” gossipy interest in the book, but also wasn’t a big fan of Cusk’s “unsubtle vehemence” and “dogged refusal of specificity”. On GoodReads, at the time of writing, it has a 3.72 rating from 80 reviews. One describes it as “the literary equivalent of vagueposting”.
It’s still not known whether Portman ever collaborated with Cusk on Life of M, but the final pages describe a standoff between M and the narrator over their “autobiography” project. “I don’t like the way you portray me,” M says. “You’ve made it seem like I lack humanity.” Cusk told the New York Times that her intent was to disorient the reader and seed doubt: “It’s almost like the book that you’ve just read completely explodes and self-destructs at the end.” It may be, as has been speculated, that the drama is nothing but a marketing ploy, or even cooked up by Cusk and Portman together. Whatever the truth, it’s worked. Literary fiction hasn’t been of such mainstream interest since Cat Person, prompting the question: could more gossip solve the reading crisis?
