User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
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
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
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...
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2020One 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.
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
“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.
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
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
Rating: really liked it
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...
Rating: really liked it
My favorite contemporary novel I've read so far this year (more comments to come in a video soon)
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
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.
Rating: really liked it
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.
