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Life of M
Not yet published
Expected 25 Aug 26From the critically-acclaimed author of the Outline trilogy, an irresistible novel of fame, power, beauty and truth -- and a blazing renovation of the form.
A little while ago, I told the actor M that I was thinking of writing her autobiography. She liked the idea. She's a good sport. Would you just make it up? she said.
The film star M is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child.
With such fame, her life has the appearance of people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away.
Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M's life, in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths-about the very experience of living-might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? Is M to play a character in the book, or is it the writer who is acting the role of M?
In this astonishing, explosive novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for the nature of truth without ever swerving away into self-deceptions. She investigates who we are, and pretend to be, at this late stage of modern life when we are hypnotized, more and more effectively, by the images we see everywhere. She shows us that the real value of life might lie not in beauty but in ugliness; in having a self that has survived the violence of the world. Life of M is a beautiful piece of music, audible in a world of noise and spectacle.
A little while ago, I told the actor M that I was thinking of writing her autobiography. She liked the idea. She's a good sport. Would you just make it up? she said.
The film star M is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child.
With such fame, her life has the appearance of people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away.
Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M's life, in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths-about the very experience of living-might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? Is M to play a character in the book, or is it the writer who is acting the role of M?
In this astonishing, explosive novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for the nature of truth without ever swerving away into self-deceptions. She investigates who we are, and pretend to be, at this late stage of modern life when we are hypnotized, more and more effectively, by the images we see everywhere. She shows us that the real value of life might lie not in beauty but in ugliness; in having a self that has survived the violence of the world. Life of M is a beautiful piece of music, audible in a world of noise and spectacle.
- GenresFictionContemporary
Kindle Edition
Expected publication August 25, 2026
About the author
Rachel Cusk
56 books5,398 followersRachel Cusk was born in Canada, and spent some of her childhood in Los Angeles, before her family returned to England, in 1974, when Cusk was 8 years old. She read English at New College, Oxford.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
Cusk is the Whitbread Award–winning author of two memoirs, including The Last Supper, and seven novels, including Arlington Park, Saving Agnes, The Temporary, The Country Life, and The Lucky Ones.
She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her most recent novel, Outline (2014), was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmith's Prize and the Bailey's prize, and longlisted for Canada's Giller Prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'
She lives in Brighton, England.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 13, 2026
cuskheads we are SO back
Want to Read
March 28, 2026GIMME GIMME GIMME
May 17, 2026
Rachel Cusk’s Life of M returns to many of the questions that made the Outline trilogy so compelling: how can a person be represented through narrative, and what remains hidden even after exhaustive description? The novel takes the form of a fictional autobiography written about M, yet M herself remains strangely absent throughout — refracted through the voice of the author-narrator rather than directly revealed. By the end, I still felt that I did not know who M was, which seems entirely intentional. At times the book even suggests that the act of describing M becomes a form of self-portraiture, with the narrator exposing herself through the attempt to construct another person.
While I did not find it quite as powerful or formally sharp as the Outline trilogy, I still found it deeply engaging and intellectually rich. It also felt connected to the world of Parade, particularly in its fragmented approach to identity and artistic self-construction, though Life of M struck me as more grounded and emotionally connected. The characters and environments felt less insulated by privilege, giving the novel a stronger sense of social and material reality beneath its philosophical concerns.
One aspect I especially admired was the recurring attention to architecture and space. Cusk moves from intimate domestic interiors to larger urban landscapes with remarkable precision, and these spatial descriptions seem to mirror the emotional and psychological distances between people. Rooms, buildings, and cities become ways of thinking about identity itself: what is exposed, what is concealed, and how people inhabit the structures around them.
Like much of Cusk’s work, this is a novel more interested in perception than resolution. Readers looking for a conventional emotional arc may find it elusive, but I appreciated its ambiguity and the way it resists ever fully “solving” M. A thoughtful and unsettling novel that lingers after finishing.
A book that surely will profit from a second reading after the ending is revealed.
Thank you the publisher and Netgalley for the digital arc!
While I did not find it quite as powerful or formally sharp as the Outline trilogy, I still found it deeply engaging and intellectually rich. It also felt connected to the world of Parade, particularly in its fragmented approach to identity and artistic self-construction, though Life of M struck me as more grounded and emotionally connected. The characters and environments felt less insulated by privilege, giving the novel a stronger sense of social and material reality beneath its philosophical concerns.
One aspect I especially admired was the recurring attention to architecture and space. Cusk moves from intimate domestic interiors to larger urban landscapes with remarkable precision, and these spatial descriptions seem to mirror the emotional and psychological distances between people. Rooms, buildings, and cities become ways of thinking about identity itself: what is exposed, what is concealed, and how people inhabit the structures around them.
Like much of Cusk’s work, this is a novel more interested in perception than resolution. Readers looking for a conventional emotional arc may find it elusive, but I appreciated its ambiguity and the way it resists ever fully “solving” M. A thoughtful and unsettling novel that lingers after finishing.
A book that surely will profit from a second reading after the ending is revealed.
Thank you the publisher and Netgalley for the digital arc!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Cusk’s best work since Outline.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews