I Read 'Life of M' in Two Days—Here's the Natalie Portman Scoop

Over the summer, a particular novel was bubbling up in literary circles, but it wasn't standard BookTok fare. Rather than being a pacy, 300-page romantasy or an Emily Henry juggernaut, this slim tome came in at less than 200 pages...but the rumors that surrounded it could have run as long as Gone With the Wind. They were all swirling around Natalie Portman, who, many believed, was thinly veiled as the titular M in British author Rachel Cusk's new book, Life of M. Curious myself, I scooped up a copy—and what I found buried in the 186 pages surprised me.

Right off the bat: This is not a novel about Natalie Portman. However, what is true is that the actress, M, shares some undeniable details with the Oscar winner. Their origins in the film industry, early roles and a brand deal that could very well allude to Dior (Portman has been the face of the Miss Dior perfume line since 2011), all make a convincing case. M has children but is unmarried, the city in which the novel takes place seems to be Paris. (The structure which could be the Eiffel Tower is scathingly described as "brutal in its ugliness.")

Those are all the details that could be confirmed on the record; otherwise, the allegation that this is, indeed, a Portman biography, would be a tough case to make, because the actress keeps a tight lid on her private life. There were rumors that Portman was angry about the publication, however, the final chapter of Cusk's book also alludes to a similar situation. Coming upon those pages, it seemed to me that this was something jumping off the page and into real life with no real basis.

The drama aside, I found Life of M to be rather interesting. Overall, it's plotless—something I tend not to like—but it does work. I was propelled right to the end. Cusk writes with a brevity that is juxtaposed by detail. Lines like, "It was hard not to feel ugly next to M. Part of it was the ugliness of experience...Her difficulty lay in her distance from the random violence of insignificance."

The prose punched, but it was not loquacious, weaving in sarcasm and, occasionally, biting humor. Sentences are peppered with aphorisms drawing stark lines between reality and performance, interrogating the veil that divides public and private life and sardonically making observations over the indignities to which "normal" people are subjected, while those of privilege, namely fame and money, like M, can rise above the slog.

At times snarky and at others irreverent, Cusk succeeds in writing a compelling character study. I'm not even sure this qualifies as a novel in the traditional sense of the word; she breaks many rules over which E.M. Forster waxes in his seminal text, Aspects of the Novel. Everything is sparse; no character excepting M has a name and, for the most part, though granular, descriptions are vague. Normally I would give up on a book like this, but the character study was so incisive that it hooked me; I think the vagueness helped make the point that M is living a blurred life bordering on unreality. M and the way she moves through her world is rather captivating, if only because it challenges the notions of what and when constitutes performance.