Life of M

Where did you do most of your reading of this one, and did the book ask for a particular setting (a quiet chair, late night, nobody talking to you)?

Cusk's sentences are famously cool and precise. Did that feel like company or like distance while you were reading? No wrong answer, just whatever it felt like in your hands.

This is a book about the shape a life takes, the parts that get narrated and the parts that get skipped. Which ordinary, unremarkable stretch of your own life would you actually want written down with this much attention?

Cusk keeps returning to domestic life, the rooms and routines and obligations of it. Was there a small domestic detail in the book that comforted you, and one that made you flinch a little?

The book is interested in how women get described by other people. When has being described by someone else felt generous to you, and when has it felt like a cage? Share only as much as you want.

There is a lot of silence and withholding here. Did you find the restraint soothing, or did part of you want the book to soften and tell you more? What were you hoping it would give you?

Think about where you were with this book around the two-thirds mark, before you knew where it was heading. What were you quietly hoping for on the narrator's behalf, and how did sitting with that hope feel?

Cusk leaves a lot of room for the reader to finish the thought. Without spelling out where it lands, what did you find yourself carrying around in the days after you closed it, and has anything in your own life started to look different because of it?