Anne Enright Puns

Last night I finished Actress by Anne Enright, after a week of reading it fitfully - for the first half I was having a lot of trouble engaging with it, and in the second half it turned a corner and I practically couldn't put it down.

The book follows the life of the titular Actress, Katherine O'Dell, as viewed by her daughter Norah. It's more of a character study than a novel that follows a plot or story; or rather, any sense of narrative is incidental compared to this being a book about what these people's internal lives are like, and especially how Norah relates to her mother's fame and especially to the oddities of her personality that make that fame possible.

There's an incredible amount in this book about the themes of taking and giving. Katherine, in her capacity as a famous actress, seems to have accidentally dedicated her life to giving - performances are "given", her presence is a "gift" to the people around her, etc. And similarly, everyone who encounters her wants to take something from her, whether it be a moment of her time, a glancing brush with the fame and prestige that she carries, or something more significant of herself. Later in life Norah explores these patterns within herself, how she observed this life that her mother led and how it impacts her own relationship to taking and giving, especially in regard to >!her sexuality and her intimate (both sexual and non-sexual) relationships with people.!<

In the end, >!Katherine is driven to severe mental illness, although it's hard to determine whether that's as a result of the life she led and the things she's experienced, or a fundamental part of her that was always there.!< This reflects another theme of the book, the idea of Acting, of performing and pretending, and the question of how to tell when a person like this is being genuine. When your entire life and livelihood are centered around your ability to portray emotions that you're not experiencing, where does that end? And to what extent do we all do that, and deceive ourselves and each other?

This ultimately wound up being a much more interesting and in-depth book than I would have given it credit for based on the first few chapters. The last 50 pages or so were deeply personal to the characters, and left me feeling like I had just had a window into the innermost thoughts of an actual person - Anne Enright's execution is brilliant, and I'd love to read more by her. I didn't see any other posts on r/Books about this, s

"Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die."