Book reviews: ‘The Life of M’ and ‘Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature’

‘The Life of M’ by Rachel Cusk

“I have disappointing news,” said Laura Miller in Slate. Rachel Cusk’s 11th novel, which has widely been rumored to be a dirt-dishing character assassination of a particular A-lister she’s been friendly with, “isn’t really about Natalie Portman at all.” Granted, the book concerns an actress, identified only as M, whose screen credits, including a breakthrough performance at 13, track with Portman’s. But the novel makes its intentions clear in its opening lines, when the narrator reports having confessed an interest in writing M’s autobiography and M asking if the story would be entirely made up. Cusk, who’s celebrated for forays into autofiction that interrogate the novel as a form, is plainly about to construct “a narrative hall of mirrors that only a fool would confuse with a thinly veiled roman à clef about a celebrity.”

“Like most of Cusk’s recent work, Life of M is mainly plotless,” said Emma Alpern in NYMag.com. We see little that happens in M’s life beyond her moving through her days unable to muster any strong feelings or connect to reality as most people experience it. Meanwhile, the narrator neither recedes nor reveals any substantial personal information. Though “there’s a mesmerizing, out-of-time quality to the whole scenario,” Cusk arguably goes too far here in her bid to dismantle fiction’s presumptions, because “her insistence on vagueness can be tedious.” The result is “Cusk’s weakest novel yet,” said Becca Rothfeld in The New Yorker. “Life of M is not a disciplined dismantling; it’s a machine breaking down at random.” Cusk wants to make the point that individual experiences don’t matter anymore because we all succumb to a form of groupthink, then reveals her towering self-regard by endowing every one of her characters with the same “humorless, cosmopolitan, self-important” voice that’s undoubtedly her own.

“Life of M is a strange book,” said Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic. “But in its final pages, it performs an astonishing rug pull that makes you wonder whether the book actually has been an autobiography all along, interested in exposing not M but the knotty and unpalatable process of Cusk’s art.” Throughout her career, Cusk has drawn fire, and even been sued, for creating unflattering portraits of recognizable people she has known. Her narrator here admits late in the book that she imagined her way into M’s mind to entertain herself. “To be a writer in this way is to be parasitic—to latch onto someone real and to try to draw out their life force to make art. It isn’t exactly defensible, but for Cusk to expose that practice is deeply fascinating.”

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‘Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature’ by Emily Wilson

“You don’t have to be particularly interested in ancient literature to enjoy this book,” said Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times. “By the time you finish it,” though, “you probably will be.” In this collection of “wonderfully spirited” essays about great works of the past, Emily Wilson, a classicist best known for her 2017 translation of The Odyssey, is up-front about how every translation contains an element of betrayal. Each word or phrase chosen requires a departure from the original, and attempts at literal exactness generate stiff language. Wilson believes it’s important to capture the feel of a text—its sound, pacing, and even humor. As she weaves together close readings of classic texts with arguments about the larger issues at stake in those texts, “Wilson’s excitement for her subject is irrepressibly moving.”

When Wilson finds fault with a translator, she’s “tough-minded,” even “scathing,” said Blake Morrison in The Guardian. She calls out poet Robert Browning for indecipherable translations and American classics popularizer Edith Hamilton for racism, and she decries all classicists who snobbishly try to bar entry to their domain. “Gatekeeping isn’t Wilson’s style,” and she’s eager to end her field’s use of Latin and Greek to keep out the plebs. She also loves to point out how much overlap exists between the ancient world and our own, finding parallels that link Aeschylus, Demosthenes, and Aristophanes with the likes of Spike Lee and Erica Jong. And she slams Silicon Valley’s tech lords for embracing a version of stoicism that misses the essentials.

Though Wilson went viral earlier this summer with a biting critique she published about the hit screen adaptation of The Odyssey, said Kate Tuttle in The Boston Globe, she champions nuanced critical writing. In this book, said Harvey Freedenberg in Shelf Awareness, the role of critic affords her a chance to unspool “a stimulating tour of Greek and Roman literature.” An essay on Sappho explores female sexuality; elsewhere, we learn about Roman humor and slavery in the ancient world. “Anyone who’s been exposed to Wilson’s work will learn much from these essays.” They’ll also “hope her journey as a trusted guide through this distant world continues.”