Rachel Cusk's new novel and the Natalie Portman question
A summer feud over a British novelist's latest book has drawn three separate pieces in the New York Times, with readers wondering whether the actress inspired its portrait of celebrity.
According to Bibliobs (Le Nouvel Obs), the literary story of the summer was not a prize or a rentrée title but a rumor: that Rachel Cusk's new novel, "Life of M," turns a cold, precise lens on Natalie Portman. The speculation was serious enough to generate three separate articles in the New York Times, Bibliobs notes, an unusual amount of attention for a single novel's supposed real-life model.
Bibliobs describes the book itself as an examination of the emptiness of celebrity, and says reading it leaves an unease behind. The review does not settle whether Portman is in fact the target, framing the question in its headline as one still open: whether the book is worth reading regardless of the gossip attached to it.
No French publication date, translator or plot detail beyond the celebrity theme is given in the source material, so none is reported here.
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