“... fill the pages with dialogue, Sinéad retreats from view (much like Faye, the protagonist of Rachel Cusk’s autofictional trilogy). Characters who would normally be on the fringes of a narrative step into the spotlight. Michal Piwaski, a Polish care assistant, disarms us with his lack of social grace: ‘In maternity they’d steal ...”

“... milk leaking from her breasts onto her dress, asks what it is and then appears to be repelled. Rachel Cusk’s profile of Paul for the New York Times in 2019 is filled with a kind of pity for and rage against Paul’s subjugation, and places it in the larger context of the impossible combination, for a woman, of motherhood and a creative life (as in ...”