On making the grade

Messud uses the verb "scoff" at one other point, when she recalls a first-person piece she read in a magazine, some years ago, while killing time in a waiting room. It was about a woman who had only just realised that you weren't graded at the end of your life. At first it seemed a ridiculous notion but as she read on, it began to dawn on Messud that she half-identified with it. Now, she says, "I still believe on some level that at the end somebody will say: you get an A-minus for your life. And it's not true....