Actress (2020) by Anne Enright

Book Review

Actress (2020)

by Anne Enright

   My attempt to achieve gender equality in my 2020 reading list appears doomed to failure.  With under two weeks in the year, and close to two hundred books either read or listened to in Audiobook format, the ratio is 55 percent male to 45 percent male.  Actress is another example of my attempt to force gender equity onto my reading list.  It's the most recent book by  former Booker prize winner Anne Enright(she's Irish).  Most importantly the LA library has an Audiobook edition available, and as I've often noted, if you want to read non-American authors your wait time for electronic editions goes way down in the Los Angeles Public library system. 

  Norah, the narrator, is the daughter of Irish actress Katherine O'Dell, a woman in the grand actress tradition of Judy Garland or Norma Desmond, but Irish. It's a dense, sophisticated gloss on a familiar theme. Enright is known for her emotionally sophisticated family interactions but here that view is expanded to the world outside mid 20th century Ireland, as Norah recounts Katherine's adventures abroad before her return home and long decline, witnessed, first-hand, by Norah.