Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

Few figures in contemporary British literature divide people like Rachel Cusk. The writer, whose new memoir Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation is published next month, attracts both admiration and ire: for her boldness as an artist, her self-belief, her pitiless gaze at herself and others. Her earlier book, A Life's Work, a devastating confessional about her experience of motherhood, "the long pilgrimage of pregnancy with its wonders and abasements, the apotheosis of childbirth, the sacking and slow rebuilding of every last corner of my private world that motherhood has entailed", attracted fury from some women critics: why bother having children, they said, if you're just going to write about how grim it all is. And Aftermath looks set to provoke more anger: it is a fierce, at times brutal examination of how Cusk left her husband of 10 years, and how she then tried to rebuild her life and the lives of her two children – considering stay-at-home mothers who describe themselves as "lucky", a disturbed lodger and a new lover along the way. She has again mined her life and told of her experience of being a woman, in a manner that is in no way comforting. Women writers do not tend to do this and get away with it.

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk

Rachel Cusk