Actress

ACTRESS

by Anne Enright

 

Nomination: Women's Longlist 2020

 

Date Read: July 19, 2021

 

While Actress does focus on a famous personality and her years on the stage, this is ultimately a novel about a daughter coming to terms with her famous mother and their loving, but often fraught relationship. Norah is the only daughter of Katherine O’Dell, a personality that is part phantom, part blood and bone and Norah sifts through her memories trying to separate fact from fiction.

 

Katherine’s entire persona is crafted for her public life – her name, her nationality, her striving – all concocted for the benefit of her career. The product of theater parents, her life as an actress is almost inevitable. After an interview in which an author is seeking details for a biography she is writing about the famous Katherine O’Dell, Norah’s partner encourages her to write it herself.

 

Norah retraces Katherine’s life, from her early years in England to her move to Dublin. She looks at the content her mother created, the accolades she received and her slow decline into obscurity and then madness. Being a woman, Katherine slowly ages out at such an early age – to old to play younger roles and even the older roles. Having been used by the industry, chewed up and spit out, she slowly begins to unravel and lose her mind. 

 

Katherine, having been snubbed a person she considered a friend and offered unkind words about a screenplay she wrote, ends up shooting him in the foot. Katherine ends up serving time in prison and then in a mental institution. Norah is by her side as Katherine takes her last breath, at home, just the two of them together.

 

I found Enright’s insight and treatment of the complicated mother/daughter relationship absolutely exquisite. She is an incredible talent and this is the first Enright I have read. I am delighted I have many more with which to experience her gift.

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