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.
