![\"Jane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/c6a3766181aae0473a925d3989c29b80e2f7a510.png\")
Jane Sullivan<\/a>Books columnist and reviewer<\/p>\nAugust 18, 2026 \u2014 3:30pm<\/p>\n
August 18, 2026 \u2014 3:30pm<\/p>\n
Save<\/p>\n
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n
Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n We all love a juicy literary scandal, and there have been plenty of them recently involving memoirs. But the latest concerns a famous novelist and an even more famous movie star.<\/p>\n Rachel Cusk\u2019s new novel, M, is about an actress whose beautiful face is everywhere. She is observed by an author, something of a friend, who has her permission to write about her. What emerges is a portrait of a woman who lives a luxurious yet unreal life, seems unreal to herself, and tries to make connections that might enable her to become a human being.<\/p>\n Even before the book\u2019s release<\/a> (September 1, in Australia), rumours were flying around Hollywood that the mysterious M was none other than Natalie Portman, reportedly a friend of Cusk\u2019s and a fan of her writing: she promoted Cusk\u2019s novel Parade on her Instagram book club and talked to her online about her novel Second Place. They both live in Paris.<\/p>\n Many pointers lead to Portman. One is that the actress M began her career as a child and some explicit sexual scenes in her first film were cut at her mother\u2019s request. Portman first acted in Luc Besson\u2019s 1994 Leon: The Professional when she was 11 and 12. Her mother demanded cuts in the script. Another is M\u2019s starring role as a \u201cvulnerable and self-torturing ballerina\u201d in a film that \u201cbrought her a new kind of glory\u201d \u2013 much like Natalie Portman\u2019s role in Darren Aronofsky\u2019s 2010 Black Swan, for which she won the best actress Oscar. Plus, there are the luxury campaigns M features in \u201cwreathed in the pink flowers of spring\u201d which are like those of Portman\u2019s Chanel ads.<\/p>\n Life of M opens with the unnamed narrator recounting how she told M she wanted to write her biography. \u201cShe liked the idea. She\u2019s a good sport. Would you just make it up? she said,\u201d the narrator reports. But the goodwill fades as the project continues; in Cusk\u2019s novel, the actress grows angry and betrayed \u2013 \u201cshe didn\u2019t seem to like it all that much\u201d.<\/p>\n Rumour suggests that might also be the outcome in life, though so far, neither Cusk nor Portman has made any comment.<\/p>\n What does this episode say about an author\u2019s right to mine another person\u2019s life for their fiction, even with that person\u2019s permission? We hear a lot these days about autofiction, a kind of creative writing close to reality: perhaps only the names are changed. But writers have been doing this for a very long time.<\/p>\n Sometimes they have petty revenge in mind, scores to settle, an urge to tell their own side of a story. Other times they are fascinated and inspired and want to explore people they know in more depth on the page. Or they want to confess their own failings. All these motives can exist together.<\/p>\n Her writing is acclaimed because of its relentless drilling down below the surfaces of personality and character.<\/p>\n Ernest Hemingway\u2019s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was unashamedly about himself and a group of friends in Spain in the 1920s. The friends were horrified when he revealed that two of them were having an affair.<\/p>\n Truman Capote came undone when he exposed secrets about his lady friends in high society in a novel he never finished. When an excerpt was published in Esquire, he was banished from their magic circle.<\/p>\n Editor’s pick More recently, Philip Roth and Karl Ove Knausgaard, in their very different ways, made brilliant careers out of writing tell-all fiction about themselves, their wives, their families and friends, and had to weather the consequences, including threats of legal action. Roth made a few threats himself.<\/p>\n Indeed, Cusk has already faced challenges from people who felt exposed by her writing. The first run of her 2009 novel The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy was pulped because she was threatened with a lawsuit for breach of privacy. And author Damian Barr complained he was the character Julian in her 2017 novel Transit.<\/p>\n I feel for these people, but ultimately, anyone who knows anything about Cusk\u2019s work can\u2019t expect to get an easy ride. Her writing is acclaimed because of its relentless drilling down below the surfaces of personality and character, exposing people\u2019s buried desires and sometimes a longing, as in M\u2019s case, to discover who they really are \u2013 or even if they exist at all. Friends of Cusk: you have been warned.<\/p>\n What else is happening in the book world?Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Rachel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ebde203771782228727241c71699be438ee74dd8.jpeg\")
Rachel Cusk (left) has reportedly based her new novel on Natalie Portman. <\/p>\n![\"Richard](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1787057655_744_1e2a0f28490eacbc1f60e8118e965f2abc7c60f846bc4c80d71daab002672806.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"Jane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768175300_408_c6a3766181aae0473a925d3989c29b80e2f7a510.png\")