Actress : a novel

In this novel written as a memoir, the daughter of a famous, deceased actress looks back on her mother's life and its impact on her own. Extremely well written, and the narrator is mostly kind to her mom, but I found the pre- and post- WWII famous-actressy promiscuity, diva antics, and self-destructive behavior a bit of a yawn. I also have a personal aversion to the memoir form which didn't help. I listened to the book, with Enright reading, and she does do an excellent job of it.

Years ago I read and loved The Gathering, so this was kind of a disappointment.

everything that's to do with the mam's acting career here is great. enright is pound for pound, the best living writer in terms of the quality of the prose and she is clearly having great fun here representing the hollywood studio system, ireland's mid-century theatre avant-garde and the literati of the seventies

its so good that it makes me wish that the book wasn't mediated through the narrator we have, who is looking back on her mother's life and work from the present. i didn't get much out of this distancing effect, and it seems very much aligned with enright-type narrators we've gotten in 'the gathering'; middle-class women with a dark secret buried in their family's past which gives them this elemental rage that sustains them as it destroys them, but i was never really clear on what the deep dark secret here is, or why the narrator was angry, the pay-off you get towards the end didn't really seem to justify it

focusing on the mother and her tack to republicanism in the wake of the internment in the north and the dublin-monaghan bombings in the novel's 'past' would have had the virtue of capturing the immediacy of the narrative drama of that time, rather than someone who can't forgive her mother for being an apologist for 'violence'. i was never at all interested in any of the narrator's love interests, cannot fathom why they received so much attention