Rachel Cusk's new novel Life of M follows a nameless, genderless narrator's fraught friendship with M, a globally famous film actor whose life story bears striking similarities to Natalie Portman's career. The book explores how fame corrodes authenticity and family relationships, using the narrator's attempt to write M's story as a lens on the blurred lines between performance and reality, a theme with clear resonance in today's social-media-saturated culture.

Details echoing Portman's career include M's mother insisting on cutting sex scenes from her debut film (as happened with Portman's 1994 film Léon) and a recognisable Black Swan-style ballerina role. The novel grew out of a New Yorker short story called Project, much of which appears intact in the opening chapters, before Cusk expands the narrative to probe M more deeply. The review praises Cusk's precise, spare prose and sharp insights, even while noting her observations about celebrity and authenticity aren't especially novel, and highlights this as her second novel, after Parade, developed from a New Yorker piece.