Actress
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:17th Jun '21
Should be back in stock very soon
‘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 . . .
A perfect jewel of a book, a dark emerald set in the Irish laureate’s fictional tiara, alongside her Man Booker Prize winner The Gathering (2007) and The Green Road (2015). Its brilliance is complex and multifaceted, but completely lucid… Actress is a deeply humane, often darkly funny novel about the exercise of power over sexually attractive women. The grim subject matter is illuminated by Enright’s acute sensitivity to language… Enright proves, once again, her genius. -- Ruth Scurr * Spectator *
Anne Enright, the unofficial rock star of literary fiction, cements her stardom with Actress. -- Niamh Donnelly * Irish Times *
Actress absolutely enthralled me… [An] immersive, masterful novel. -- Anya Meyerowitz * Red Magazine *
In Katherine O’Dell, her fictional fallen star of stage and screen…Enright has created a heroine asirresistible to the reader as to her audiences… She has become a byword for contemporary Irish literary fiction at its finest. -- Lisa Allardice * Guardian *
May I recommend Actress by Anne Enright. Her writing is always pitch perfect, but this is truly exquisite. If there is such a thing as the perfect novel, this is it. -- Nigella Lawson
- Long-listed for Womens Prize for Fiction 2020 (UK)
ISBN: 9781529112139
Dimensions: 197mm x 129mm x 16mm
Weight: 197g
272 pages