Life of M by Rachel Cusk review – is this story of a film star based on Natalie Portman?

M is a celebrated film actor. A star since childhood, now the face of a major fashion brand, she has been famous all her life. That her career closely resembles Natalie Portman’s has been gleefully seized upon by the press, something Rachel Cusk must surely have anticipated: in the novel, M’s first film has its sex scenes cut at her mother’s insistence, as happened with Portman’s 1994 debut *Leon*, while her ballerina movie is recognisably *Black Swan*. M is also, in the words of the nameless and genderless narrator of *Life of M*, ‘a good sport’. When the narrator suggests writing M’s autobiography, M likes the idea. ‘Would you just make it up?’ she asks. A celebrity autobiography is seldom the work of the celebrity herself. And yet any suggestion that the narrator will serve as a kind of ghostwriter to M is dispensed with in a few pages. The pair meet for coffee at a luxury hotel and, after the narrator’s partner falls suddenly and seriously ill, for lunch in a restaurant. The lunch is unsatisfactory, an attempt at intimacy that the narrator acknowledges afterwards to have been a mistake. Though M is determined to live as normal a life as possible (‘her personal task is to become real, or rather to acquire some reality’), the narrator is uncomfortably aware of their own falseness with M: ‘It was as if I was acting, while M came across as authentic and real. It was as if she was the only one good enough at acting to attain reality.’ After that the two do not see one another again ‘for a long time’. Yet a book about M, or at least partly about M, materialises. Episodes from M’s life are intercut with observations from the narrator’s own experiences. The M sections are precise, specific: an acting class led by a renowned theatre director, a difficult encounter with a controlling ex, a holiday in an immaculately curated villa in Greece. The impression is of clips from a film, an effect heightened by meticulous descriptions of place that preface each scene like stage directions, detailing furniture, layout, and textures. In a world where everyone is acting, Cusk suggests that appearance is all the certainty we have. The novel explores the frictionless, lifeless existence of celebrity, the corrosive effect of fame on family relationships, and the blend of fervent purity and crushing cynicism that defines someone forged in power and pretence. The prose is sharp and spare, with ideas landing like punches or secrets. While rooted in particulars like a flaming sunset on a switched-off TV or a museum room curated to seem lived-in, some sections feel detached or puzzling. The novel is a study of fame’s illusion, where the narrator’s reflection mirrors M’s celebrity, and the reader is left with a mix of admiration and detachment.