Actress

by Anne Enright

From the Man Booker Prize–winner, a brilliant and moving novel about celebrity, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths.

Katherine O’Dell is an Irish theater legend. As her daughter Norah retraces her mother’s celebrated career and bohemian life, she delves into long-kept secrets, both her mother’s and her own.

Katherine began her career on Ireland’s bus-and-truck circuit before making it to London’s West End, Broadway, and finally Hollywood. Every moment of her life is a star turn, with young Norah standing in the wings. But the mother-daughter romance cannot survive Katherine’s past or the world’s damage. With age, alcohol, and dimming stardom, her grip on reality grows fitful and, fueled by a proud and long-simmering rage, she commits a bizarre crime.

Her mother’s protector, Norah understands the destructive love that binds an actress to her audience, but also the strength that an actress takes from her art. Once the victim of a haunting crime herself, Norah eventually becomes a writer, wife, and mother, finding her way to her own hard-won joy. Actress is finally a book about the freedom we find in our work and in the love we make and keep.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Historical

270 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 3, 2020

About the author

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has published three volumes of stories, one book of nonfiction, and five novels. In 2015, she was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her novel The Gathering won the Man Booker Prize, and The Forgotten Waltz won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

VIALE DEL TRAMONTO


Fotografia di Lawrence Schiller (sulla copertina, anche dell’edizione inglese).

Era sfiancante, lo sapevamo tutti. Le succhiava tutte le sue energie, questa faccenda di entrare nel personaggio, e poi stare nel personaggio, e poi, dolorosamente, uscire dal personaggio. Era così lungo il viaggio di ritorno nel mondo reale.

M’è parso d’essere seduto sul divano accanto all’io narrante che Anne Enright ha creato (alter ego?) per raccontare la sua storia. E questa donna, che conosco per la prima volta, mai vista prima, sfoglia davanti ai miei occhi un album di fotografie di famiglia, facendo nomi, inanellando storie e aneddoti, momenti di vita, quella di sua madre, l’attrice del titolo, e la sua: senza seguire un ordine particolare, men che meno cronologico, saltando da prima a dopo a molto prima, da lui a lei, da questo a quell’altro. Un flusso che mi stordisce e al contempo mi affascina e porta con sé.



Cresce presto la sensazione che non sono stato invitato per un semplice tè e pasticcini (o tartine al burro e cetriolo): cresce la sensazione che dietro questa parata di ricordi e memoria si nasconda un segreto che mi verrà rivelato.
Ma lei, Norah, la figlia di Katherine O’Dell, che aveva adottato come nome d’arte il cognome della madre irlandesizzandolo con quell’apostrofo birichino, attrice di teatro e cinema e cantante, la diva, Norah non sta parlando a me. Nonostante io le sia seduto accanto, e l’ascolti, la legga.
Ci metto del tempo a capire che sta parlando a un altro uomo, che non sono io, all’uomo che è suo marito da trent’anni, o forse quaranta, e insieme hanno figli.


Maureen O’Sullivan, attrice degli anni 40’/50’, nata nel 1911 a Boyle nella contea di Roscommon, in Irlanda.

Dissi che era come essere stata un aereo tutta la vita senza sapere di poter volare. Non gli dissi che era come un bambino che fa il primo passo, e capisce a cosa servono veramente i piedi.
A chi è che sta descrivendo la prima volta che ha fatto l’amore in modo così bello, a me o a lui?
O forse sbaglio, e Norah sta rispondendo all’intervista di una laureanda che sta scrivendo una tesi su sua madre, l’attrice.
Ma no, Norah sta scrivendo un romanzo, questo che ho letto.



Come la copertina mostra chiaramente – e nel corso del romanzo Norah descrive una foto trovata su internet che sembra proprio questa tranne lievi differenze – quinte e palcoscenico, chi guarda chi, l’attrice il pubblico, il pubblico lei, la bambina (la figlia Norah) la madre? È più vero quella che succede sul palcoscenico o quello che si prova in platea o sente stando dietro le quinte? Il gioco di incastri e specchi parte al principio e prosegue fino alla fine. Ma forse Norah ripassando la storia di sua madre, l’attrice, attraverso il filtro della memoria e dei ricordi, delle sue peregrinazioni e ricerche, sta in effetti cercando il fantasma nel suo sangue, sta cercando di sapere, adesso che è più grande di sua madre quando morì, vuole sapere chi è stato l’uomo suo padre, quella figura assente per tutto il corso della sua vita.



Un’Irlanda diversa, poco conosciuta, poco letta e poco vista: ci sono preti e suore e chiesa cattolica, ma non in quel modo opprimente cui sono abituato nella letteratura e nel cinema irlandese; ci sono scogliere, traghetti e bei paesaggi, ma sono assenti le ragazze di campagna e quelle dagli occhi verdi, si parla di IRA e attentati, ma è tutto visto con prospettiva nuova e personale. Attori e attrici, produttori registi sceneggiatori commediografi scrittori, Orson Welles e Samuel Beckett, radio e televisione, palcoscenico set varietà ribalta, luci trucco stampa interviste: ecco l’Irlanda che racconta Anne Enright.



Norah, proprio come Anne E., ha scritto e pubblicato cinque romanzi prima di questo. Ha cominciato dopo la morte di sua madre. E, un po’ è lei a farmelo pensare, un po’ sono io in autonomia a credere che questo sia il più bello di tutti.

Enright tratta tutto, scrive e descrive con la sua voce, che non assomiglia a nessun’altra, mai banale, mai semplice senza però essere complicata, con ironia e ritmo controllato pur se in apparenza svagato, in assenza di ordine cronologico, più per cerchi che si vanno a chiudere (concentrici?). e man mano ci svela e regala i segreti della sua storia, segreti che non sono quelli che aspettavamo, e però non deludono mai.


Lawrence Schiller è autore di magnifici scatti di attori celeberrimi, tra cui questo di una Marilyn più che mai splendida.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actress by Anne Enright is a 2020 W.W. Norton Company publication.

This is my first book by Anne Enright. I thought the premise sounded like something I might like, partly because of the of the old Hollywood angle and the hint of scandal.

While the book paints a bleak and very un-glamorous picture of how women are used- chewed up and spat out- in Hollywood, this novel is more of an examination of a mother/daughter dynamic which was mired in the myth of celebrity, marred by scandal, and finally revealing a sad reality.

Norah’s mother was Katherine Bell, the great star of stage and screen. Her public persona was vastly different from her private one. Norah never knew who her father was, and her mother was wrapped up in her career, staging every moment in anticipation for the next big role. But, when Katherine's star began to fade, things take a turn for the worse, ending in a rage fueled act of violence that permanently shut the lid on her career and legacy.

Now, in mid- life, Norah, a novelist, contemplates writing a book about her mother, which sends her on a mission to locate her father, and to separate her mother from the Hollywood myth.

It’s a complicated, eye-opening journey for Norah, as she realizes the various parallels between her experiences and that of her mother. She unravels the rich history behind her mother’s fame, the building of a Hollywood image, and the seedy side of the business. She learns to better understand her mother, releasing a flood of pent up resentments, while also facing and owning her foibles.

I’m not sure this book is the best representation of this author's work, and might not have been the best introduction to Enright. Yet, her talent is quite evident in this introspective story, that although fictional, held many truths and probabilities.

Much is said, and implied, with the sparse prose, which often requires a bit of ‘reading between the lines’ to understand Norah’s observations and realizations, as well pick up on what she may be trying to tell the reader about her current state of affairs.

Overall, this book was not exactly what I was expecting, and at the risk of repeating the same old mantra, the pandemic probably had an impact on my ability to appreciate the book’s nuances.

It was one of those books I had to think about, working out my feelings before I ultimately made up my mind about it. I can’t say it was a favorite. I liked it okay, but it didn’t impress me in the way I had hoped. Still, I am glad I read it, and hope to sample more of Enright's work in the future.

3 stars

[Anne Bogel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five solid stars specifically for the narrator's voice + the audiobook performance by author Anne Enright, the combination of those two factors made for an incredible listening experience; I don't think I would have enjoyed the print version nearly as much.

Speaking of the print version: I had it checked out of the library for SIX MONTHS (due to COVID-19 closures), returned it unread, and only then downloaded the audiobook after a reading friend told me it was fabulous in that format. (She was right.)

This reflective and often pained retrospective examines a complex mother-daughter relationship. Daughter Norah's musings are prompted by a graduate student who comes calling, seeking insight into the life of her mother, the brilliant Irish actress Katherine O'Dell.

The style is almost—but not quite—stream of consciousness, as Norah examines her mother's early years as an actress, her sudden and enduring fame, and then her encroaching mental illness.

I loved this book for its voice: Norah is a remarkable narrator of her mother's story, and I loved the sly way she lets her own story slip into the frame.

Anne Enright is equally remarkable: very few novelists narrate their own audiobooks, but Enright reads hers here in an incredible performance.

[Peter Boyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a love-hate relationship with the work of Anne Enright. I would consider The Green Road one of the finest Irish novels of the 21st century. But I felt nothing for The Gathering or The Forgotten Waltz, despite the adulation and awards they received. And I'm sorry to say that Actress falls into the latter category.

The story is narrated by Norah, daughter of the legendary Katherine O'Dell, a flame-haired star of stage and screen. Now a middle-aged writer, she reminisces about growing up as the child of a celebrity: the glitz and glamour, the never-ending parties, the many handsome admirers. But she also remembers a darker side, as Katherine's starlight began to flicker and fade. Alcoholism, loneliness, a descent into madness. Norah tries to make sense of her mother's life as she sketches her own path, from unplanned birth to the present day. She begins to pinpoint the moment that it all turned very wrong for Katherine, which led to the strange act of violence that she is sadly remembered for.

On a sentence by sentence level, this book is well-written. It is most revealing on the dingy side of fame, the dependencies that it creates, and how in Katherine's case, its fleeting nature leaves a chasm that can never be filled. But I have to be honest, I was unmoved as a whole. It has plenty to say about the bond between mother and daughter, but I just didn't care about the fate of the characters. And the meandering timeline didn't help things - I started to lose interest about halfway through. I've seen lots of praise of Actress, but I'm afraid it left me cold.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Enright writes so well that she just might ruin you for anyone else. The deceptively casual flow of her stories belies their craft, a profound intelligence sealed invisibly behind life’s mirror. Over the course of seven novels, this first laureate of Irish fiction has won the Booker Prize — for “The Gathering” in 2007 — and won readers around the world.

Her new novel, “Actress,” explores a mother-daughter relationship burdened by fame. The narrator is a novelist named Norah recalling the tumultuous life of her mother: Katherine O’Dell, the late, great star of stage and screen. Enright weaves this fictional celebrity deep into the history of 20th-century entertainment. O’Dell once brought audiences jumping to their feet in London, New York and Dublin. As “the globe-trotting muse of writers as various as Samuel Beckett and Arthur Kopit,” she captured the hearts of a generation. Reviewing her performance as Sister Mary Felicitas, Pauline Kael praised “the twinkle in the wimple.” Her flaming red hair was iconic. A line from her dairy commercial — “Sure, ’tis only butter” — became a national catchphrase.

But Norah knows the story of this grande dame from the inside. “My mother was a great fake,” she says. “She was never happy.” That’s not entirely true — or it’s not the only truth as this narrative winds through grief and remorse, amazement and delight. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not expect to love this as much as I did. I often struggle with historical fiction and I have tried to read Enright before but found her endlessly bleak – this book is the opposite of that. I found it clever and funny and absolutely incredibly well-written. The latter was probably to be expected – there is a reason Enright is one of the Great Writers of our time. I listened to the audiobook which she reads herself and this was such a genius thing to do – her narration is pitchperfect and works exceedingly well for the stream-of-consciousness feel of the book.

This book is, at its core, about a mother and daughter relationship, but it is also so much more: it is an impeccably structured love letter to human connection, it is a reckoning with sexism, it is a warm and kind and still wildly biting commentary on the arts and literature and I loved it so very much. (As is sometimes the case when I feel like a book is custom-made for me, this is more gush than review, please do bear with me.)

The book is told from Norah’s perspective as a winding inner monologue about her mother – famous theatre and movie actress Katherine O’Dell, told in parts to the narrator’s husband, in parts to a PhD student interested in “finding the woman behind the myth”. Enright makes the narrative style seem effortless but it is so impeccably done that I was swept along and got hit in the feelings at just the right moments. The prose and the structure are the obvious draw here – but I also loved the way in which the characters, especially Katherine and her daughter Norah are drawn. I found them real and believable and wonderfully flawed. The other characters are not always quite as sharp, but in a way this works for a narrator whose very identity is influenced so very much by her relationship to her mother.

While there were some plot developments that I did not completely loved, the overall reading experience was just too wonderful. Norah is such a brilliantly flawed character and spending time in her head was a delight for me.

Content warning: Rape, mental illness, death of a loved one

You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Actress” is a story about a daughter delving into the history of her famous actress mother. As Norah, the daughter, narrates the story, the reader is provided with a woman’s study of the female work and sexual struggle from early Hollywood era to current times. But it’s more than that, it’s a powerful story of a mother and daughter, and the fraught relationship when the mother is a narcistic creative person touched with mental health issues. As Norah’s story reveals, it’s difficult being a daughter of a famous mother, but the difficulty is compounded when the mother doesn’t really want to be a mother.

Norah tells her mother’s (Katherine O’Dell) beginnings as a theatrical actress in Dublin where she gains notoriety as an Irish actress. Katherine previously changed her last name to O’Dell and dyed her hair red. Katherine is really from England. She becomes a short-lived Hollywood star because she aged-out (at 45-year-old) yet lasted longer than most who generally through in the towel at age 30.

Sadly, Katherine falls into alcoholism, mental illness, and violence. Norah is left dealing with her mother. During Norah’s adolescence, Katherine was emotionally unavailable, leaving Norah to fend for herself. Yet Norah isn’t angry with her mother. She spends her adult life trying to understand her mother.

Author Anne Enright is a gifted storyteller with many awards under her belt. “The Actress” will be one that will garner her attention. The story is amazing in that Enright’s narrator is clever, compassionate, and funny. This could be a maudlin story, but Enright doesn’t want that. She wants a feminist story told from a strong woman who reflects upon the struggles her mother underwent.

I listened to the audio version which is narrated by Enright. Enright possesses a beautiful voice and adds emotion to her story. I’m very happy I listened to the story.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2020

One of Enright's more enjoyable novels, this is a tale of mothers and daughters. The daughter Norah is the narrator, looking back in late middle age, and the mother, now long dead and once a famous actress, is Katherine O'Dell. The two women's stories get roughly even amounts of the book.

Enright's account has the right blend of nostalgia and hard reality - the parts of the book that describe Katherine's childhood in a travelling theatre that tours Ireland are entertaining. Katherine's own career in Hollywood is effectively ended by her pregnancy, and Norah has to deal with her embittered older self, who retains delusions of her own importance. Much of Norah's story is about how she had to escape from her mother's overbearing shadow, but this is not a bitter story as her account of Katherine's life is very empathetic.

[Heidi (can’t retire soon enough) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stream of consciousness prose in this book pushed me forward constantly. Reading was a surprising pleasure, despite the fact there is no plot to speak of. We learn about a once slightly reknown actress through mostly memories — tossed together like a salad— from her only child, a daughter.

I can’t tell you why I loved this book, which felt more like a true memoir than fiction, but it never bored me. Maybe it’s because I truly love theatre and actors— have my own memories of being surrounded by theatrical folks. Artists have always fascinated me— envy no doubt of their talent and confidence.

But hey— back to the review...

Near the end, Norah’s jumbled and melancholic memories remind me of my own loss, perhaps that’s the point.

For me, she was neither an actress nor my mother, but an aunt who was as important to me, and maybe more, than either my biological mother or loving stepmother. She held the keys to my own past, just as Katherine holds Norah’s familial key to learning who her father is.

For the Katherines (and Barbara’s) of this world, this book is the old cardboard box of memories you leave behind and what we have left to remember you by.

The last few chapters were especially touching— no twist, no forced exit, just a quiet close. Acceptance in the absence of closure can sometimes be just enough.

[Karen Witzler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good complex writing. ~~~ A week has passed and I keep thinking of this book.

I read it because it was on the Women's Prize Longlist - I was expecting middle-of-the-road literary fiction, but this is a substantive and beautifully written work that could have been on the Shortlist - and I would not have cried "Foul" had it won.

The story of the actress/mother and the writer/daughter is told in a non-linear fashion, giving it the quality of memory and constant reassessment through time. Quite early on we know that one has a happy ending and that one dies in the madhouse. The book becomes a meditation on how identity is constructed - national, public, private, personal, on the stage and that known only to God.

A wonderful portrait of Dublin in the Seventies.

I loved the scene with the cinematographer; it captured the qualities of visual art in print.

There is an echo of a rumor about Natalie Wood (and probably many others.)

Many thoughts, many ideas in a short volume - For what it's worth, I am changing my Goodreads rating from four to five stars.

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Anne Enright novel didn't disappoint.

Actress is about a mother-daughter relationship, told by the daughter. Now older than when her mother died, Norah is reminiscing about her peculiar childhood, as the only child of the famous Irish actress, Katherine O’Dell. Isn't it interesting how the older we get the more sympathetic, understanding we are towards our parents? Having our own kids, relationships allow us to see our parents in a different light. Enright balanced the narrative between Norah's childhood memories and the young adult's very well, there's melancholy, admirations, vexation while also attempting to put together the puzzle her mother was. We never really know someone completely, even more so when your mother is an actress who always adapts and changes to suit her company, usually men.
While it's easy to read and digest, this is also complex and layered. I enjoyed it a great deal, so I'm going to make sure I read more Enright.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a special fondness for novels that are about actresses/actors. Two of my favourite books are Joyce Carol Oates’ “Blonde” about the actress Norma Jean Baker who becomes the persona Marilyn Monroe and Susan Sontag’s “In America” about the Polish actress Helena Modjeska who helped found a utopian community in the late 1800s. I even wrote my MA dissertation on these novels and how both writers explore the borders between identity and performance in their stories. I also have a love for Anne Enright’s writing as few other current authors are able to write about family, love and national identity the way she can as exemplified in her previous novel “The Green Road” which is a fascinating depiction of all these things.

This means that “Actress” is the perfect novel for me and it fully delivered because I absolutely adored it. It’s told from the perspective of Norah, a writer who has written five novels and now feels ready to tell the story of her mother Katherine O’Dell who died at the relatively early age of 58. At the height of her mother’s career she was a great actress of Broadway and Hollywood and, at the lower end of it, found herself doing TV commercials and became the focus of a tabloid scandal. Though her mother’s star faded long ago and Norah herself is much older, the effects of that celebrity and the uneasy relationship it created between them are still something Norah wrestles with. In this story Norah tries to piece together a history of Katherine’s life and the real impact of her fame.

Read my full review of Actress by Anne Enright on LonesomeReader

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was only going to give this book 2 stars truth be told…I was so disappointed in it because I wanted to like it (obviously). I have several books of Enright’s including her Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Gathering. For the first 200 pages of the 264-page book I was bored and disappointed. But then there were some unexpected events in the last 50 pages or so of the novel that were relayed to the reader in the first person by Norah, who was daughter of Katherine O’ Dell, “the actress”. As well in the chapters near the end of the book, there were passages of writing where I wrote down in my notes, “good paragraph” or “good writing”. As a consequence, I bumped up my rating to 2.5 stars which then becomes 3 stars. I’m glad…I just wish the majority of the book had been more engaging.

We are told about Katherine O’Dell’s life from practically her birth to grave by Norah and her own story from when she was a child up to the present day. This novel read like a memoir written by the daughter, Norah, about her mother’s life as well as her own. I found neither of their lives particularly arresting until near the end, and that was mostly about Katherine and who Norah’s father was.

Actors and actresses are mentioned in the book of having been in productions with O’Dell or whom she was acquainted with including Charles Laughton, Alec Guinness, and Orson Welles, although this is a book of fiction. Movies and play titles were mentioned including movies in which O’Dell starred in called “When Angels Weep” (1955), “Devil’s Horn Ranch” (1956), and “Mulligan’s Holy War”. I believe they were fictional as I could not find them when googling.

Notes
• My copy of the book was the US edition from W.W. Norton & Company. The book jacket was just OK — it shows the drawing of half of the face of a woman with red hair (a caricature of Katherine O’Dell). But the book jacket by the true first issue was from Jonathan Cape (UK) and I loved it, and I used it when posting my review. I love some dust jackets, just as I love some album covers (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Dark Side of the Moon…). Anyway, the dust jacket of the UK book is a black and white photograph and shows a little girl in the wings of a stage and in the middle of the stage, in the limelight in front of the audience, is the actress with her arms outstretched I liked it a lot, and I only saw the dust jacket after I read the book and realized that scene was played out in the book as follows:
—Among the images of my mother that exist online is a black-and-white photograph of me, watching her from the wings. I am four or five years of age and sitting on a stool, in a little matinee coat and a bowl haircut. Beyond me, Katherine O’Dell performs to the unseen crowd. She is dressed in a glittering dark gown, you can not see the edges of her or the shape her figure makes, just the slice of cheekbone, the line of her chin. Her hands are uplifted.—

What I also liked about the dust jacket was it was reminiscent of the dust wrapper of Ian McEwan’s “Atonement”, the first issue which was also a Jonathan Cape edition, showing a black and white photograph of a girl sitting on some steps looking bored. The US edition had a different dust jacket that I did not like as much. I just found that to be coincidental/interesting.

• Anne Enright talked about the book at an event on February 27 of this year at 7 pm at St. George’s Church at Bloomsbury Way, Holborn in London England with author Andrew O’Hagan. I have an announcement of that event from the London Review of Books, a literary magazine that I love and subscribe to. I figure literary events soon after that were put on indefinite hold because of the international pandemic. ☹

Reviews (they’re all stellar):
• https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
• https://fictionwritersreview.com/revi...
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/bo...

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is amazing. Enright knows how to craft a sentence. That’s the only reason I finished the book. Because the story was, well, boring. I kept waiting for something to happen but nothing ever did. I get that in literary fiction we’re looking for character transformation and it’s not all about plot, but the character transformation of the actress’s younger daughter just wasn’t amazing. Norah writes the story to her several decades-long husband but I just didn’t get it. So her mother was eccentric. Her mother had a dalliance that young Norah observed in the hallway one night. But I couldn’t relate to her mother’s impact on Norah and see how it shaped her. Norah just wasn’t fleshed out enough to me to make the life of an Irish Hollywood actress interesting.

[Jennifer (Insert Lit Pun)]

My favorite contemporary novel I've read so far this year (more comments to come in a video soon)

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What kind of mother was she?"
"Well," I said. "She was mine."

In contrast to so many recent books which have focused on dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships, this one puts a bond that is full of love and adoration at its heart but without making the portrait either saccharine or neat. There's still complexity here in the character of Katherine and what that means for her daughter, Norah.

My first Enright, this is a quiet book and it's actually quite restrained given that the 'actress' is larger than life in a professional sense. But one of the things this story contemplates is the separation of Katherine the actress from her person and the question of performativity from stage to everyday life.

Norah, her daughter, is a writer, now middle-aged, and for all the dramatisation of her various youthful love affairs, her evocation of married love with her husband of many years is also domestic and the good side of mundane.

Once I'd tapped into the rhythm of this book - muted, understated - I found it very moving. We only ever see Katherine via her daughter and so dramatic episodes in her life are at arms-length. What we're left with is a lovely tribute to family love in all its everyday, down-to-earth, pedestrian reality and how that weathers and outlasts everything thrown at it.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among the images of my mother that exist online is a black-and-white photograph of me, watching her from the wings. I am four or five years of age, and sitting on a stool, in a little matinee coat and a bowl haircut. Beyond me, Katherine O’Dell performs to the unseen crowd. She is dressed in a glittering dark gown, you can not see the edge so her or the shape her figure makes, just the slice of cheekbone, the line of her chin. Her hands are uplifted.

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize.

Anne Enright is an author I have never really clicked with – I read her Booker prize winning “The Gathering” and her Booker/Women’s Prize longlisted/Dublin Literary Prize shortlisted “The Green Road” and both were three stars for me. I read this as it appeared in a number of 2020 Previews and I wanted to try her again.

The opening quote of my review, which is reproduced on the front cover of the version I read, sets the scene (pun intended) for this novel perfectly. The story is told in the first person by Norah, the daughter of a once famous, then notorious, actress Katherine O’Dell.

The phone was otherwise silent in Dartmouth Square, though phones were, at a guess, ringing all over Dublin. The gang of people my mother called friends were now busy being a gang without her. The difference between inside and outside was so swift, it was almost the same thing. She was, from that moment, more spoken about than to. She was the talk of the town.

Katherine was born in England to two travelling players, an English mother (family name Odell) and an Irish father. She then became an actress herself, starting by playing parts in the same company as her parents during the war in Ireland, and then in London post war where she almost overnight became a West End star, before transferring to Broadway (where she reinvented herself as the green-wearing, red-haired, Irish country-accented O’Dell) and then Hollywood and a brief flirtation with stardom, a studio-arranged marriage to a gay co-star, before the birth of Norah and a return to Ireland, and a gradual diminution of her fame, accelerated by the natural sexism/ageism of the entertainment industry. Later she ended almost as an embodiment of an Irish girl (most famously in an advert for butter) and then involved in art theatre and even her own writing, the rejection of which lead to her infamy, the shooting of a Theatre Impresario,

At the time the book is written, Norah is in her late fifties, living in Bray in County Wicklow with her husband (of 30+ years) and two teenage children (a son and a daughter). Incidentally, a quick check of Wikipedia, shows all of that to be also exactly true of Enright.

Like Enright, Norah too is a novelist, albeit the resemblance ends there as her: “five neat volumes about love and life” feature characters that are “nondescript. They rarely have sex and certainly do not attack each other” – which is a deliberate nod (I assume) to the exact opposite occurring in much of Enright’s work (including this).

After an interview about her mother, by a young twenty something journalist, Norah realises (with her husband’s encouragement) that she needs to write the story herself, “the story of my mother and Boyd O’Neill’s wound”, her own age (the same as her mother’s death) a contributor.

The book then proceeds, biographically through Katherine’s life, career and relationships; while also covering Norah’s relationship with her mother and her mother’s friends. In a way which since the book was originally conceived is now mainstream, we are exposed not just to the sexism/ageism in the entertainment industry but to the unacceptable sexual conduct endemic to it (something to which both Katherine and Norah fall victim).

We see Katherine’s flirtation (even possible involvement) with the IRA , for example leading a protest march “She had a kind of housewife scarf knotted under her chin, although it was in fact Hermes.”, and her complex relationship with a priest turned psychologist turned possibly something much more. I understand that Enright has not previously addressed either the Troubles/IRA or had a misbehaving Irish Catholic priest in her book, and alongside the central #metoo theme, this felt like at least one resonance too many.

Where, however I felt the book really faltered was due to its fidelity to form.

I cannot imagine wanting to read a biography of a real life theatre and film star, and in fact I would not even want to read a Sunday newspaper magazine article. So a novelisation of such a concept, and one which contains lengthy convincing sections of detail on plays, films, co-stars, parties attended etc. simply was not interesting to me. I would be happy with the level of detail in a brief paragraph (perhaps like my own attempt starting at "Katherine ..." above).

Where, it seemed to me, the book succeeded was in the structure surrounding the surplus staged detail.

The novel is effectively written for Norah’s husband and, from time to time, she addresses her husband directly, reflecting on their relationship in a way which, particularly when set alongside the superficiality of the world in which her mother lives, quietly celebrates a long marriage, with all its tribulations and changes. And further as Norah explores her mother’s life, she also understands more of how her own relationship with her mother (and with the father she never knew) have affected her own life choices and relationships.

It was gone. Up in our bedroom, I sat on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. If I could just stop looking, I knew, I might remember where it was. You must let the thing go, in order to find it.

Overall my favourite Enright and I think one that would add gravitas to the Women’s Prize shortlist if included, but not one that would make me revisit her past canon.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been reading entirely too much genre fiction and not even the best of it, so a palate cleanser was due and nothing does the trick quite like a work of proper literature. It may sound pretentious, but you know when you’re in a presence of literary greatness, you just do. You don’t even have to love the plot, you can still appreciate the sheer beauty of language. Somehow I’ve never read the author, though she is quite well known and even an Booker recognized. Well, Actress was a terrific introduction to Enright. The elegance of narrative alone, the seamless integration of language and emotions, the gorgeous vividness of the scenery. And for all that, still an enjoyable coherent plot (something Man Booker winner don’t always feature oddly enough) about a daughter’s quest to know and understand her mother, a once upon a famous and then quietly faded star, not just an actress, but someone with a genuine star quality, fleeting and ethereal as that might be. Katherine O’Dell, an Irish legend, a star of theatre and cinema, someone whose career peaked across the ocean, but never sustained, all to end with a scandal and a relatively early death. A woman, a mother, a thespian…so well known and yet so unknowable to the person closest to her, her only daughter. Someone left behind to reconcile the public and private figure her mother was or even to puzzle out who her father might have been. This is very much the daughter’s journey, but it is the mother’s story. If you know enough about the bygone era of actors and actresses (which is to say when such gender based definitions were even utilized, not to mention valid and crucial sociologically) Katherine’s story is a pretty typical one. The studios used their stars, squeezing them for every drop of beauty and talent, and threw them away when they aged out or became less in any way. Stars peaked, burned brightly and fizzled out. You know the trajectory, but it’s still a compelling thing to behold. The characters and scenarios have a certain familiarity, they are of a type, fictional or real…and what is even the line between the two when it comes to showbusiness. And yet, you can’t help but be drawn into the story, owning in no small way to Enright’s lovely writing. It’s almost hypnotic in a way, it’s so immersive and it reads so quickly. I did it in two sittings out of necessity, but it might have been easily done in one. And I did enjoy the plot, being a huge cinema fan, and it is a terrific meditation on fame and celebrity and consequences, but the real star of this book about a star is certainly Enright’s talent as a writer, wordcraft and storyteller. Very enjoyable read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

[Rachel]

So here's the deal: I read maybe 50 pages of this, was LOVING it, had to put it down for a while because I had like six library holds come in that I had to read more urgently, and now it's been over a month since I've touched Actress and I'm at a weird place where I'm not in the mood to pick it back up where I left off but it's too soon to start it over.  I'll revisit in a couple of months! 

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF 32%

Great writer marking time.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among the images of my mother that exist online is a black-and-white photograph of me, watching her from the wings. I am four or five years of age, and sitting on a stool, in a little matinee coat and a bowl haircut. Beyond me, Katherine O’Dell performs to the unseen crowd. She is dressed in a glittering dark gown, you can not see the edges of her, or the shape her figure makes, just the slice of her cheekbone, the line of her chin. Her hands are uplifted.

The actress of the title is Katherine O’Dell, and her story is told by her daughter, Norah. I avoided reviews of this novel, because I prefer a story to unroll as I read. I trusted the skills of Anne Enright to create a brilliant narrative of a life, and an evocative portrait not only of this mother and daughter relationship, but of Dublin, particularly Dublin of the 1970’s. The book jacket describes the Dublin of the time as shabby. On the very first page Norah reflects:
People ask me ‘What was she like?’ and I try to figure out if they mean as a normal person…. Mostly though, they mean what was she like before she went crazy…

Katherine O’Dell is fictional, but she immediately brought Maureen O’Hara to mind. O’Hara was a 1950’s Hollywood creation that embodied the American delusions about Ireland, a land of colleens and boreens, and all that malarkey that some of my fellow Americans swallow whole. O’Dell also reminded me of the tragic American actress Frances Farmer (look her up after you read Actress) who became a star in the 1940’s and died in 1970. Hollywood has perpetuated ethnic and racial stereotypes for decades. Women’s roles included the black “mammy”, the over-involved Jewish mother, the Italian “sexbomb”, and the feisty, red-headed and bull-headed Irish colleen. O’Dell became Hollywood’s Irish actress of the moment, but in Hollywood, there is seldom room for more than one of each “type”, and eventually, she was no longer considered for roles. Women in Hollywood have long worked under less favorable conditions than men. At the time, movie studios had complete control of their stars, who had to agree to exclusive contracts. O’Dell was not one for following the imposed strictures, which also had a negative impact on her career.

The novel in opens in the early 1970’s in the home of O’Dell, her daughter Norah, and housekeeper, Kitty, on Dartmouth Square, in Ranelagh. It is Norah’s twenty-first birthday, and the beginning of Katherine’s decline as an actress. Katherine is 45, and she is finding it increasingly difficult to get roles. Katherine has kept many things from her daughter: the name of Norah’s father, the story of her own upbringing, her romances and more. She’d had an unsuccessful marriage in her twenties, and never married again. She is close to some notorious figures, including IRA men. This seems to come out of Katherine’s romanticism, rather than any political conviction. Katherine succumbed to alcoholism, and eventually to mental illness. Norah, who long tried to help her mother, and Kitty, their faithful housekeeper, couldn’t save Katherine. In many stories with mothers like Katherine, the children grow up to have unsatisfactory lives. Fortunately, Norah escapes this fate and has a comfortable life.

Each reader will likely relate to different aspects of the story. For me, the Dublin of that time, and the personalities, fascinated me. It was a Dublin I experienced in my early twenties, when even Ranelagh was not particularly grand. It was a Dublin that was very much a small town, and not the world city it is now. I recall going to the Project Arts Centre in the rundown neighborhood of Temple Bar. One of the Chieftains, Derek Bell, the late harpist, was in the audience. While a few people said hello, most left him in peace. He was just another audience member. To some extent, this Dublin still exists. A friend recounted seeing Bono and family a few years ago at an outdoor café in Dalkey, where they were left in peace. In the 1970’s, Dublin was a city where no one flaunted wealth, and most Irish, even the middle class lived modest existences. It was a time where coffee and cake at Bewley’s was a treat, and there were very few decent restaurants. One exception was Gaj’s on Lower Baggot Street, run by Margaret Gaj, an exuberant and unabashedly leftist woman, born in Scotland of Irish parents. https://comeheretome.com/2016/12/02/f...
I knew her sons who lived in Boston, and was welcomed with open arms and a great meal on the house. This is the Dublin I miss.

This is an exquisitely written novel, with well-wrought characters that reflect a time, and a place. Despite O’Dell’s sad end, it is a beautiful story of a mother-daughter relationship. It was deservedly long listed for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. I am a reader who chooses the edition of a book depending on the cover, and I've learned I am not alone. The Jonathan Cape edition of the novel features a photograph like that described in the opening of this review. Highly recommended.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, rounded down.

This is my third Enright novel (the others being her Booker-winning The Gathering and Booker-nominated The Green Road), and even though the writing remains every bit as good as in those, I just found this rather pedestrian and lacking - which is odd, since theatre is my field/forte. And perhaps my disenchantment is that there wasn't more made of the titular character's career - it is cursorily laid out, but much more is made of her daughter's (the narrator of the book) life and loves... and those were rather boring to me.

Oddly, the central 'scandal' in the book is rather reminiscent of the V. Solanas/A. Warhol fracas, and I wonder if that was indeed the impetus. It certainly MOVES quickly, having been read in under 24 hours, so it does have that going for it. But I would be very surprised if it won any major awards, although it is already longlisted for the Women's Prize.

[piperitapitta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Backstage



Non è il capolavoro che mi aspettavo (potere delle recensioni e dell’entusiasmo di altri autori e librai) ma è un’ottima lettura per molti versi stupefacente: come ripercorrere, per mezzo di un'eccellente scrittura, l’ascesa e la caduta di un’attrice irlandese (una vera diva, perché «Una star si nasce, non si fa, perché le star non sono attori») raccontata dalla figlia adulta quando lei, Katherine O'Dell, è già morta da tempo. La storia, che si dipana attraversando tutte le età delle due donne, epoche e confini geografici e sociali, è una vera e propria biografia narrata in cui l'autrice stessa, Norah, è biografa di entrambe: di sé e del privilegio (dello stupore, dell’impegno e del dolore) che le è costato essere la figlia, l’amica e l’assistente (la confidente, la psicologa, l’infermiera) di una donna così forte, invadente e nel contempo, come lo sono molti artisti, così fragile, e della carriera della madre, l’attrice (la diva, la star), figlia di teatranti inglesi che in Irlanda iniziarono a calcare i teatri delle province per poi andare a tentare la fortuna in America, che divenne quella stella così fulgida da attraversare scintillante i cieli di due continenti, ma che nel giro di un tempo troppo rapido quegli stessi cieli, troppo grandi e affollati, palpabili ma effimeri, la videro incendiarsi e cadere.



Di stupefacente, come dicevo, oltre a una scrittura che - come scrive Veronica Raimo nella sua recensione su Tuttolibri - non ha mai cedimenti, è anche il fatto che nonostante l’abilità con la quale Enright si destreggi fra una minuzia di particolari, titoli di film e opere teatrali (alcune delle quali note e memorabili), nomi di critici e di autori e registi, tutto, ma proprio tutto (se si escludono le due citazioni menzionate nei ringraziamenti finali) sia completamente falso, ma non per questo meno vero.

«Mia madre era un grande falso. Era anche un’artista, una ribelle e una romantica – perciò potete chiamarla come vi pare, ma non potete chiamarla inglese, questo sarebbe un insulto. Sfortunatamente sarebbe anche vero»

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book through Goodreads First Reads.

I think this book had a lot of potential with it being about a daughter searching for the truth about her mother. I think the issue was the story became too muddled, almost bordering on becoming confusing, at times, when the story shifted from past to present. Overall, it was a good effort but something I had a hard time staying interested in.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually like Enright but I really didn’t on with this one. I found it boring and difficult to follow in some places. Just not for me.

[Jerrie]

DNF

[Inside My Library Mind · Rating 2 out of 5]

More reviews up on my blog Inside My Library Mind

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

She was always looking at the edges of things.

This book’s biggest downfall was probably my wrong expectations going into this book. I expected a story that is an exploration of a relationship between a mother and a daughter. But this book wasn’t that, not really. This book is mostly Norah remembering scenes from her life, that are related to her mother, but that were also important for Norah as a person, as she is sharing these bits and pieces with her husband.

I started out really enjoying this one, because I really enjoyed Anne Enright’s writing on the elemental, sentence-level. I think she is a very competent writer and I did enjoy Norah’s narrative voice. Enright writes in this very erratic way, which leads to Norah jumping from one thing to another in her reminiscing. And while at first I was enjoying that, it got really confusing really fast. Which is why I switched from the audiobook to the ebook, because I had so much trouble grasping the story.

However, once I did that, the story got… well, boring. The audiobook is great because it gives life to the story, it tethers it and gives it substance, so in the end, I had to both listen and read at the same time to avoid dnf-ing this one. I was really bored for the most part reading this, and that’s how I feel with almost every historical fiction. This was very descriptive in nature – we got a lot of descriptions of plays, or parties, but I just don’t care. I don’t care about the atmosphere and the setting, because I need characters to care about. Whenever this book veered towards exploring Katherine and Norah’s relationship, or Norah and her husband’s relationship, I became invested and wanted to carry on reading, but then we’d shift the focus to some other event that felt completely irrelevant. I just felt like a lot of the stuff portrayed here did not make me understand the characters more, the point or the themes in this book. All of it felt inconsequential. The book kept veering towards certain interesting topics, scratching their surface, but then never really delivering on any of it. There was room here not only to explore different relationship dynamics, which is the thing I wanted the most, but also to explore some political issues, or even some issues regarding mental health or feminism. But while the story does dip its toes into these things, it just never does anything with them, which is why my most prominent sentiment upon finishing this one was “what was even the point of this?”.

To Sum Up
At times I enjoyed this and was intrigued, but at times, I almost dnf-ed this book. And just overall, I was ultimately bored while reading this one, so another dud from the list for me.

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[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Green Road is among my most memorable reads of the past five years, so I was eagerly awaiting Enright’s new novel, which is on the Women’s Prize longlist. I read the first 30 pages and found I wasn’t warming to the voice or main characters. Norah is a novelist who, prompted by an interviewer, realizes the story she most needs to tell is her mother’s. Katherine O’Dell was “a great fake,” an actress who came to epitomize Irishness even though she was actually English. Her slow-burning backstory is punctuated by trauma and mental illness - Norah is the product of rape, and Katherine was sent to a mental hospital after shooting a film producer in the foot. “She was a great piece of anguish, madness and sorrow,” Norah concludes. I could easily see this making the Women’s Prize shortlist and earning a Booker nomination as well. It’s the sort of book I’ll need to come back to some years down the line to fully appreciate.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

This is the second book by this author I've tried to read, and there is something about her writing style that turns me off almost immediately. Everything feels like one giant run-on sentence. Her books are wordy without ever really saying much of anything. This one left me cold from the very start, and it didn't take me more than half an hour to give up.

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captivating, one of the reviews called Anne Enright’s Actress, and it caught me in a way few recent novels have.

It’s the story of a mother, the actress Katherine O’Dell, and her novelist daughter, Norah, written by Norah after Katherine’s death. It’s sometimes dark, sometimes funny; both reveals and conceals aspects of character and, ultimately, is about the nature of enduring love.

Enright is brilliant as she takes us through wild emotional ups and downs -triumphs, disasters, humiliations, kindness, neglect, madness, anger – as her characters move together, apart, together through a sort of dance that feels familiar to me from the rhythms of my relationship with own my mother, who died eight years ago yet still moves in my memory.

Katherine Odell, the actress, was, for a time, a star. But acting meant donning an identity, a theme Enright comes back to several times:

“It was exhausting, we all knew it. It took everything she had, this business of getting into character, and then, painfully, coming out of character. It was such a long journey back to the real world. No one knew why it should be so tiring or what the true alchemy of it was, but it was the difference between a real performance and just going through the motions, it was the difference between losing the audience and having them in the palm of your hand.

…I had learned, from a very young age, to go very still while my mother got herself ready for the world. I always knew where to find her keys. Out of her bedroom, back into the bedroom for some forgotten thing, patting herself down as she clattered down the stairs. Finally, at the hall door, she turned to the mirror to put herself together and this was a wonderful thing to witness – the way she locked eyes with her own reflection and fixed, by some imperceptible shift, into her public self. A tiny realignment of the shoulders, neck, chin; each element lifted and balanced, as though on hidden weights and wires around the taut line of her gaze.
Hello you.
Then she walked out the door and was famous all day”.

The relationship between mother and daughter is just one of the threads that Enright has us follow; we are also in an Irish social world of the 1960s and 70s, with lots of alcohol and lots of sex. ‘We were all half-mad in those days. The men were beside themselves, the women were always crying. Every time you got drunk, someone tried to bang their head off a wall, or they flung the window open and roared out into the night. Or am I just imagining it?’.

Reading it feels slightly terrifying, the balance of these characters’ lives is precarious, and the women suffer the consequences more than the men.

Central mysteries in the plot are unresolved in the book, though we are given hints about why Katherine eventually goes mad, as she does.

But the deep love between mother and daughter survives through all the identity shifts and the loss of persona that can come with mental illness or extreme old age. A passage near the end of the book, when Katherine was home from mental hospital and near death, resonated strongly with me.

Norah observes: ‘It took me no time to adjust after she came home from the 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, no matter what her appearance, or her mental state, and some people seemed to find that surprising.’

And see:
Ron Charles in the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...