Scan barcode
lostinthelibrary's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This is a hard book to rate. I can completely understand the type of person who would get something from this book but that person unfortunately isn't me.
Starting with what I liked. As always with Anne Enright, the prose was beautiful. The character and locations descriptions were simple but lyrical and they really did immerse me in the time period and setting. For a book where a big part is the performance of Irishness, the sense of Irishness was palpable and perhaps this was the intention. I also really liked Norah's reflections on her sexuality within the context of Ireland and wish these had made up more of the book. Saying that, I never understood why Norah is addressing this story of her mother to her husband who, even from her account, comes across as an unlikeable and disinterested man.
Unfortunately the core of the book, the fraught mother/daughter relationship just didn't appeal to me like it should have. I much preferred the large and complex families in The Green Road and The Gathering, maybe because that is closer to my family than this intimate one to one relationship.
Nor, surprisingly, did the accounts of show business and performance hold my interest. This was something I was looking forward to but a lot of the plot around it was rushed. I think the main cause of this was the structure of this book. It was very stream of consciousness with events jumping all over the place, characters and events introduced briefly and then revisited later. This made for a confusing and, at times, frustrating read as I couldn't hold the sequence of events very well in my head and even by the end do not feel like I fully understood them.
There is so much for discussion but this was still a disappointing read coming from a loved author.
Starting with what I liked. As always with Anne Enright, the prose was beautiful. The character and locations descriptions were simple but lyrical and they really did immerse me in the time period and setting. For a book where a big part is the performance of Irishness, the sense of Irishness was palpable and perhaps this was the intention. I also really liked Norah's reflections on her sexuality within the context of Ireland and wish these had made up more of the book. Saying that, I never understood why Norah is addressing this story of her mother to her husband who, even from her account, comes across as an unlikeable and disinterested man.
Unfortunately the core of the book, the fraught mother/daughter relationship just didn't appeal to me like it should have. I much preferred the large and complex families in The Green Road and The Gathering, maybe because that is closer to my family than this intimate one to one relationship.
Nor, surprisingly, did the accounts of show business and performance hold my interest. This was something I was looking forward to but a lot of the plot around it was rushed. I think the main cause of this was the structure of this book. It was very stream of consciousness with events jumping all over the place, characters and events introduced briefly and then revisited later. This made for a confusing and, at times, frustrating read as I couldn't hold the sequence of events very well in my head and even by the end do not feel like I fully understood them.
There is so much for discussion but this was still a disappointing read coming from a loved author.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape
Moderate: Mental illness
gentle_garbage_baby's review
challenging
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Excellent read - very emotional and sad in some parts. The characters are written in a way that is very believable. Would recommend for people who enjoy books about the lives of people and families rather than action-packed books.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape
Moderate: Sexual content, Gun violence, Violence, and Misogyny
Minor: Alcohol, Death of parent, Death, and Grief
Mentions some events regarding the Troubles in Ireland.beniamino's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Essentially, this book is "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" written so much better and more realistically. It's a treatise on bad men, womanhood, reality vs. fiction (acting vs. authenticity); it's a fantastic book about what it means to be a woman in a "man's world," about Irishness, about secrets, about finding peace in a world so loud.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Addiction, Mental illness, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Violence, and Rape
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
ceilisbookshelf's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief, Mental illness, Misogyny, Rape, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Sexual assault
Minor: Eating disorder, Racism, and Suicidal thoughts
notesseton's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Sexual violence
5aru's review
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
There is a sadness, or a strange sense of melancholy, to Enright's writing that is difficult to describe - yet so poignant, somehow. Each of her sentences drives itself home, precise in a way very few things are. I very much admire this quality; even though I felt I knew what the story was like, or where it was going, it still managed to make me so emotional that I find myself having a hard time placing the book on its shelf.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction and Dementia
Moderate: Rape
jersy's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I was hoping for something in the vein of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and this kinda managed to scratch that itch but as a more literary version with a more old-fashioned philosophy in the narration and some side tangents. The actual story of the actress, Katherine O´Dell, was absolutely fascinating and exactly what I was looking for, both as a fictional biography and as a character study, but while her daughter Nora was an important part of that, telling the story and adding to it as a central character of Katherine´s life, I didn’t care for the parts that were purely about her. I found it hard to relate to her world view and some of the lines were just incredible pretentious, which was made easier to endure due to the audio book narration by the author herself, which was marvelous and made that stuff almost feel natural. The real problem, however, is that Nora´s bigger parts are mostly unrelated side tangents and at one point 1h of the audio book was just dedicated to Nora not really reacting to The Troubles and describing her future husband in a way that made me dislike him.
Apart from these segments, I really enjoyed the book. The characters were both really easy to picture and clouded in mystery at the same time. They seemed like memorable personalities and the way they were described made me feel transported back in time. The story isn’t always told chronologically, which worked great to create suspense and felt like you were really in Nora´s head as she remembers it.
I just think Enright could have gone even deeper into the relationship of Nora and Katherine. There is definitely something there, especially regarding how Nora viewed her mother, but it seemed quite complex and going deeper into that would have been worth more than the present-day segments.
It´s definitely easier to recommend this to people who read a lot of literary fiction and memoirs than to fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid and straight-forwards story-focused novels.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Gun violence, and Alcoholism
deedireads's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
“Their eyes watch her from behind a mask of delight, and it is not about attraction, this look, it is more about disaster. There is a painful stretch to some of the smiles that is envy about to happen. Especially the women. There is no denying this — my mother made women, especially, difficult to themselves.”
I read Actress because it was longlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize, and I try to read the whole longlist every year. I definitely didn’t dislike it or have any complaints about it, but for some reason it just didn’t hook me and I turned the last page feeling relatively agnostic.
It’s a strange feeling because the sentences in this book are gorgeous. Sentence by sentence, Anne Enright’s writing blew me away. But the arc overall felt unexciting; I kept waiting for the book to “start.” It’s narrated by the daughter of a Broadway and film star in Ireland as she tells her and her mother’s backstories. That’s kind of it. Of course there were hard things and insightful things and beautiful things and traumatic things in there, but somehow I never felt them merge together into something particularly compelling.
That said, if you love a Hollywood insider story, or learning about the private lives of famous people, maybe this book might be for you. It’s fiction, of course, but it still has those vibes and again, the prose is absolutely beautiful.
At the end of the day, if you loved this book, I’d love to chat with you about it, because you may be able to help me love it.
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Rape (no fighting or violence and yet still, a man pushing forward with sex despite her protestations); Mental illness
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness and Rape
More...