Actress

By: Anne Enright

Narrated by: Anne Enright

Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

A brilliant and moving novel about celebrity, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths.

Katherine O’Dell is an Irish theater legend. As her daughter, Norah, retraces her mother’s celebrated career and bohemian life, she delves into long-kept secrets, both her mother’s and her own. Katherine began her career on Ireland’s bus-and-truck circuit before making it to London’s West End, Broadway, and finally Hollywood. Every moment of her life is a performance, with young Norah standing in the wings. But the mother-daughter romance cannot survive Katherine’s past or the world’s damage. With age, alcohol, and dimming stardom, Katherine’s grip on reality grows fitful. Fueled by a proud and long-simmering rage, she commits a bizarre crime.

As Norah’s role gradually changes to Katherine’s protector, caregiver, and finally legacy-keeper, she revisits her mother’s life of fiercely kept secrets; and Norah reveals in turn the secrets of her own sexual and emotional coming-of-age story. Her narrative is shaped by three braided searches: for her father’s identity; for her mother’s motive in donning a Chanel suit one morning and shooting a TV producer in the foot; and her own search for a husband, family, and work she loves.

Bringing to life two generations of women with difficult sexual histories, both assaulted and silenced, both finding - or failing to find - their powers of recovery, Actress touches a raw and timely nerve. With virtuosic storytelling and in prose at turns lyrical and knife-sharp, Enright takes readers to the heart of the maddening yet tender love that binds a mother and daughter.

©2020 Anne Enright (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Brilliant writing, poor narration

I so wish that writers would not narrate their own books - it never fails to detract from the story. Please, leave the narration to the professionals. Wonderful story, but the telling is monotone at best, grating at worst. Sentences often open with a shout and end with an unintelligible whisper. I love Anne Enright, but I will just read her books going forward if the narration remains with the author.

Enright does it again!

“The 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.

I absolutely love the narration of this book. She is amazing!

I enjoyed this book. The writer Anne Enright is a beautiful writer. She has a spectacular way with words. She gets to the heart of things in a stunning way. She paints such an intricate and interesting portrait of her Mother (the actress) as well as each beautifully depicted character in the book. Her narration of the book is exquisite. She is captivating what a wonderful performance. She is tops! As if her writing wasn’t alive enough, her performance took it another step. With her cadence and natural style it’s as if she were there living the moment.

Beautiful

A beautiful novel, full of Irish irony and insights. Read by the author, which, in this rare case, is excellent.

Magnificent!

Astonishingly true, wise and funny. I feel I’ve been given a gift to cherish. It is read with elegance by the author.

Beautiful novel

Loved hearing Anne Enright's narration. The book is so thoughtful and filled with truth. Lovely.

I really just couldn't get into this book....

I'm not sure if its the story, or the narration.. but it didn't do anything for me...'

Not engaging enough

Fans of all things Irish will no doubt disagree, but this book is average at best in its ability to engage the reader. The author’s accent and acting ability are lovely and might have enhanced the action if there were any, but combined with the stream-of-consciousness style, they become distracting and make it harder to follow the tediously long descriptions that seem to cry out, “This is literature!” I grew impatient with so many details about the title character presented before I knew if I cared about her at all. Around Chapter 4, I decided I didn’t. Call me plebeian, I like my fiction to have a plot.