Actress: A Novel

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.