Book Review: Actress

Actress, by Anne Enright

    Katherine O'Dell was one of Ireland's best-known and beloved actresses.

    But author Anne Enright relates a few problems with that in this finctional biography/memoir of O'Dell, narrated by her daughter Norah

     For one thing, O'Dell was born in England. Her acting career, while it encompassed some starring roles in the West End, Broadway, and Hollywood, was largely mythical. So she became Ireland's best-known actress by pretending to be Ireland's best-known actress.

    The eyes were naturally green. The hair was dyed the appropriate Irish color. Her agent dictated her style.

"From now on," he said, "you wear any color you like, so long as it's green." By this he meant anything from teal to emerald -- all forty shades of it. The hotel dresser arrived, pulled my mother's head gently back into the sink, and two hours later she was a flaming redhead.

    So she looked the part and played the role well. Being Irish is a character, and she was good at it. On the stage or in front of the camera, she was the familiar Irish ingenue. She pulled off the intrigue needed to keep up the illusion of her craft. She was as much the idea of an actor as she was the reality.

   O'Dell lived in Dublin in the rare ol' times, where little was as it seemed,  and where everyone kept their closest feelings close to the vest. That meant O'Dell was always performing. She was the star. 

    Norah, the narrator, reveals the stories of her mother the actress along with her own. Both their stories are similar and familiar. She reveals her mother's hopes, dreams, and fears. She mixes in tales of her own life, which paled in comparison to her mother's. But both shared bouts of drinking, days of torment, and instances of trauma and abuse.

    As the narrator, Norah speaks like a neighbor -- or perhaps, an older, wiser aunt -- telling the tale over a laminated kitchen table filled with cooling cups of tea, ignored biscuits, and over-flowing ashtrays. She would nod her head at whatever you had to say, then with a wink and a knowing smile, put you to rights. "Aye," she say, "but let me tell ya what's really going on.

    And then she'd be off. 

    There are some quibbles. Some of the minor characters are merely background noise, although they play brief but important roles in the story. But they are poorly drawn out, and thus hard to remember. And our narrator tends to jumps around in time, here and there, introducing new characters without warning, causing one to get confused.

    But overall, it's a well-told tale.