A Life's Work

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I was cited everywhere as having said the unsayable: that it is possible for a woman to dislike her children, even to regret having brought them into the world. I read this sitting in the foot-high summer grass that grew through the terrace, above a wild sea of rhododendron bushes. It took me a long time to realise that her accusation came from the book itself, from a falsification of its personal material.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to hire Cabot to edit the full film, but I used his work as a template. Financing: Grants from the Puffin Foundation, the Yip Harburg Foundation, Indiegogo fundraiser, and self. What is really startling about A Life's Work is that it is genuinely post-feminist, not in the sense that we do not need feminism any more, but in the sense that it implicitly points to the holes in the familiar feminist discourse. She had seemed harmless enough: I would not have suspected her of such drastic reach, such annihilating middle-class smugness ("which would be a shame"). Yet I had experienced it, in a way: it was part of what I had found intolerable in the public culture of motherhood, the childcare manuals and the toddler groups, the discourse of domestic life, even the politics of birth itself.My great love for my children and step-child slowly liberated me from much of what I felt about the past. The book generated mild controversy for its “brutal honesty” ( Publishers’ Weekly) about the reality of childcare: Cusk focuses on her struggle to maintain an independent sense of herself in the face of her child’s needs. Although Cusk focuses on the shock, the anxiety, and the guilt of motherhood, the memoir is shot through with profound experiences of love and transformation made possible by her daughter: “One evening, sitting outside in the garden in the dusk, I realize that three months have passed and that summer has come. The film focuses on four projects and the people behind them in an effort to answer this universal question.

Although she has decided she wants to be a mother, she is apprehensive about the dramatic upheaval a child will bring. I had been asked many times - am still asked - by journalists barely able to contain their excitement lest I say "yes", whether I regretted having my children. The film’s personal, deep emotional roots will, I believe, contribute immeasurably to its power and make it a unique film. She is scathing about the official literature in particular, noting that its inadequacy only serves to make her feel more alone.DL:After watching the film, I hope the viewer recognizes that the path of the subjects in the film is similar to their own, which I hope will prompt them to ask themselves “What will my legacy be? My insides grew gritty, my nerves sharp…I no longer slept in the intervals, but merely rested silently like some legendary figure, itinerant, doughty, and far from home. By the time we moved to the house beside the pleasure gardens, which had a study, I was nearly finished.

Another review, in a different paper: this one long and articulate where the first was brief and blunt. Cusk anatomises motherhood as Montaigne anatomised friendship or Robert Burton anatomised melancholy . The reproduction, modification, distribution, or re-publication of the content (including RSS feeds) without prior permission is strictly prohibited.Instead, he wrote Anna Karenina, excavating the woman extant in the mother and demonstrating her power to destroy, for motherhood is a career in conformity from which no amount of subterfuge can liberate the soul without violence. Alongside her personal narrative, Cusk offers reflections on the experience of motherhood more broadly, drawing on literary depictions of parenthood. Perhaps strangely, it was the second remark that troubled me more than the possibility that humanity would be extinguished by my hand.