kavreb’s review of Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation > Likes and Comments

A thoughtful review. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for the comment! As always, a pleasure, and an encouragement :)

Wow! That is a fantastic review and it crystallizes a lot of things I couldn’t quite put together. I am also writer and divorced. Like you the divorce is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I remember thinking as I was going through it that if I didn’t let go, I would become incredibly bitter and calcified into that state. So I simply chose to let go . Sadness was like a fever that runs it so course but bitterness stays with you forever. In Aftermath I was mesmerized by the poetic language but I got lost in a haunting sense of contempt and anger that laced the prose. As a divorced person, I suppose I could have all those feelings Cusk brings to the page but they dissipated even in my own journal. In the middle of early motherhood and middle motherhood as well as divorce, I really didn’t stop to think of my role as a mother or society’s expectations. Of course, I always noticed there were factions of women and parents that I didn’t resonate with, but I didn’t put it into a political stance . frankly I didn’t have that much time to think about it. The problem I have with the author’s clear writerly talent is also knowing a little bit about her and the sense I get that this is not a person I would like to have a coffee with. I love the poetry, but the anger and bitterness alienate me. There is also a certain vindictiveness that is very offputting. It is an old argument : many people are able to separate the art from the artist, but I’ve never been able to do that. Once I know something I know something and it always mingles together. I have heard a quote by Cusk that her parents prefer to be happy all the time and resented her telling the truth. She is also strained from her father and somewhat her mother. I am not judging that, every family has their stuff, but I could sort of see at Thanksgiving the autjor might be a difficult guest.

Marcy wrote: "Wow! That is a fantastic review and it crystallizes a lot of things I couldn’t quite put together. I am also writer and divorced. Like you the divorce is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I..."

Thank you for the comment (and the affecting praise :) ). I think you put it beautifully with “Sadness was like a fever that runs its course but bitterness stays with you forever” and I agree with it, also thinking back on other things that have sparked bitterness and how difficult it can be to overcome. While with sadness, I for example teach my kids that sadness is okay and one shouldn’t be afraid of it, as it’s just one of life’s more prevalent emotions and, given time and care, usually passes (and if it doesn’t, one should probably look for professional help). I also still communicate with my ex-wife as we share custody, but I am filled with neither hatred nor yearning for her; mostly I'm just annoyed by the things we still disagree on. But one has to find a constructive way forward; sometimes it can be full ignorance of the other, but when there’s kids involved, it has to be something more positive - both for their sake and one’s own (but especially theirs). I think life’s easier when one learns to accept sadness and how to move on. And, well, be more considerate of others than the author shows herself to be in the book :P

(Though I guess there’s always a danger of looking awful when we are truthful in writing about what we really feel and think; like Annie Ernaux, never afraid to reveal even the most shameful moments and thoughts from her life, it can create dislike in other people but it can also help us, the readers, to accept that not everything going on in our minds is pretty or “correct”, and that that is just how life is; what one does with it is another question).

Still, I have considered reading more from Cusk, but I really, really do not know if it will ever happen.