"Why do we live so painfully in our fictions? Why do we suffer so, from the things we have ourselves invented?" Like M, she asks readers to challenge their ideas and limits. How M defends herself against his attacks is the crux of the novel, and in lesser hands, it might have been trite or grossly philosophical.Īt once intuitive and analytical, Cusk masterfully anchors her uncompromising interrogation of self, art, freedom and gender in her lively signature prose and the honesty of her characters.
Instead, their relationship becomes combative as he misses no opportunity to devilishly pick apart her deepest insecurities and hang them out to dry. She hopes that L, unburdened by his gender, will be able to express what she cannot. Being a woman and a mother, she will always come in "second place". She is jealous of L and the "elemental freedom" being male affords him, particularly as an artist. "Everything would have been better - would have been right, would have been how it ought to be - had I been a boy," she says. M is a 50-year-old mother struggling with her identity, completely detached from her beauty, femininity and her truth as a woman.
0 kommentar(er)
