I was surprised by how much I didn’t like Aftermath. It’s funny, I sort of enjoy Cusk’s unlikable protagonists when they’re fictional, but it turns out that her non-fiction voice is not so different and rather annoying (though I don’t remember this bothering me in her motherhood book, maybe because I found it more relatable?). Mostly, though, my complaint was that nothing in the book seemed particularly original — it was a lot of things you’ve heard expressed before, better.
Of course, this may be because I was also listening to Haley Mlotek’s No Fault (an entirely serendipitous reading selection, don’t worry, I’m very happy in my relationship), which is much more interesting. Dispositionally, I am already far more inclined towards Mlotek, who is only slightly younger than me, shares a lot of the same cultural and theoretical references (Cavell, Berlant, literotica), and says things like, “I want you to ask if I’ve read Anna Karenina. I do not want you to ask what I’d do for love.” I was delighted to discover she’d published this book (or rather, a book) because years ago when I first started teaching the SCUM Manifesto I happened across an essay of hers that made a big impression on me, and so learning about this new book was like being united with an old friend.
Anyways, No Fault is less a memoir and more of a meditation on the nature and history of divorce, on the “question of what divorce should be, who it is for, and why the institution of marriage maintains its power.” I’ve thought plenty about the institution of marriage, but I hadn’t considered divorce as an institution in its own right, and this book was a really engaging and thought-provoking way of doing so.
Kasia Reads 