Actress
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE
-
-
3.6 • 7 Ratings
-
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
‘Written with all the ingenuity and twisty tautness of a thriller’ The Times
From the Booker-winning Irish author, a brilliant and moving novel about fame, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths.
This is the story of Irish theatre legend Katherine O’Dell, as told by her daughter Norah. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London’s West End. Katherine’s life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings.
But this romance between mother and daughter cannot survive Katherine’s past, or the world’s damage. As Norah uncovers her mother’s secrets, she acquires a few of her own. Then, fame turns to infamy when Katherine decides to commit a bizarre crime.
Actress is about a daughter’s search for the truth: the dark secret in the bright star, and what drove Katherine finally mad . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This evocative, incisive tale from Man Booker winner Enright (The Gathering) turns a gimlet eye on the complicated relationship between a famous mother and her only daughter. Actor Katherine O'Dell is known throughout Ireland in the 1970s and '80s; she is also a loving if distracted and sometimes absent single mother to Norah, who's often left in the care of her nanny. Norah, who narrates, recounts mainly through flashback Katherine's star rising from humble beginnings in a traveling Irish theater troupe to her peak in Hollywood, where she increasingly struggles with alcoholism and depression. As Katherine enters her 50s, it largely falls to Norah to care for her mother, but when Katherine is committed to a mental hospital after shooting a movie producer in the foot, Norah finds professional help to care for her mother, as Norah marries, has children, and pursues her writing career. Enright portrays her characters with tenderness and grace ("It took me no time to adjust after she came home from hospital. And I don't know what I loved, as I tended her fragile bones, but I thought I loved my mother. Because she was always the same person for me"), depicting a fraught mother-daughter relationship without clich or condescension. Enright's fans will love thissharp, moving work.
Customer Reviews
Stage fright
3.5 stars
Author
Irish. Has published three volumes of stories, one book of non-fiction and five novels. The Gathering (2007) won the Man Booker prize. Her last novel, The Green Road (2015) was highly praised and won various awards. In that year, she was named the inaugural laureate for Irish fiction.
Plot
Norah, novelist and daughter of Irish theatre legend Katherine O'Dell, revisits her mother's celebrated career, bohemian lifestyle, and many secrets from some years after the death of the diva, who died in a psychiatric institution where sh'ed been confined from some years after shooting a male Irish producer and entrepreneur. Along the way, Norah explores the history of Irish theatre since World War 2 and learns a few things about herself. The plot doesn't really go anywhere, just keeps circling, or perhaps cycling, back and forth in time.
Characters
Principally Norah and Katherine, who are drawn with Ms Enright's usual attention to detail.
Narrative
First person by Norah. Started well but became a tad confusing after a while, at least for this little black duck
Prose
Exquisite - worth the cover price all by itself
Bottom line
Hard to fault technically, but it didn't hold my interest past about halfway. If truth be known, the same could be said for the rest of Ms Enright's oeuvre, as well as that of Ali Smith. Especially her.