Customer Reviews

The Confessions of Edward Day (Vintage Contemporaries)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Martin hits a slam dunk with this wry and thoughtful novel set in the Manhattan theatre world of the 1970's where much of the story is framed around the illusions and theatrical aspirations of its three main characters, Edward Day, his arch nemesis the dashing Guy Margate and the beautiful but brittle Madeleine Delavergne whose mysterious ascendancy to the boards of off-Broadway is ultimately poignant and tragic. Like the stuff of Shakespeare, the novel begins with a tragedy when Edward's mother and her girlfriend Helen commit suicide together in their Brooklyn apartment, the act a catalyst for Edward as he finds solace in his acting classes. A remedy from unbearable sorrow and guilt, Edward plunges into his new craft, searching for a visceral way to give an audience everything they need to know about suffering, overwhelmingly drawing on his personal tragedy. It is here in New York as Edward endures the frustration of auditions and the anxious wait for call-back sessions that he meets his first great love, the beautiful and completely fearless Madeleine who makes him laugh and is "evidently available." Edward is rhapsodic. And even as he befriends the curly-headed Teddy and his friend Mindy, partaking in late night swimming and smoking pot, his affair with Madeleine is cemented amid the sighs and cries muffled by the steady rumbling of the tide. Typical of his tribe, Edward is plagued with self-important narcissism, his young life characterized by a type of self congratulatory grandeur. It's not surprising then, the desire for Madeline loses its edge and a comfortable familiar smugness appears to take its place.

Intent to practice his Brando - "the wolf on the prowl in search of a mate," the relationship between the tortuously ambitious Edward and the equally ruthless Guy forms the core of this story, when Guy rescues Edward from certain death after almost drowning off the waters of the Jersey Shore. Edward is just about to give into his fate when Guy thuds into the darkness, his arms lifting him and dragging him back into the world: "Sick, weak and grateful to be alive." Guy is the rescuer who saved Edward's life, so how can Edward repay him? Almost at once the metaphorical stage is set for what becomes a battle of wits, wills and of the best roles as both young men battle it out, using the poor, brittle Madeline as a type of ruse. Pretty early on Guy's dark eyes fixate on Madeleine with a sinister distant interest and Edward quickly realizes there's' something unnerving and menacing about him, his demeanor almost like Christopher Walken's "death's-head grin" Both men look a lot alike - a type in a casting call: " the handsome white guys." There's Guy with his "long canines and wolfish grin," and Edward with his piercing eyes who can stop audiences in their tracks.

When Guy finds himself in financial straights, he automatically looks to Edward to help him out, after all this is the chronic condition of the actor. Consequently, Edward is torn between feeling grateful to Guy for saving his life, but what he feels is not gratitude, Edward mostly feels wary of Guy and just like the actor, he's prepared to present him with a reasonable facsimile of the proper emotion. With theatrical aspirations of her own, Madeleine is inspired by both Edward and Guy and their endeavors, but she's brittle and easily led, and also in her own way quite narcissistic and self-absorbed. She lets herself be pulled into the brutal orbit of Edward and Guy, but then is overjoyed at Guy's brief rise in popularly, his success, heralding the realization that that there's nothing going on underneath- "he's just a big stupid naked self-absorbed, unfeeling ape." Ultimately a decade long feud takes place with Guy attacking Edward on three emotional fronts: his feelings for Madeleine, his personal sense of obligation to him for saving his life, and Edward's insecurity as an actor. All the while Martin speculates what means to be an actor. A narcissistic and superstitious tribe, her characters are perhaps fairly representative - always looking for luck and a glimpse of the future, fearing success and embracing failure, desiring that which is dangerous or forbidden and might cause us to suffer while also strive to be independent, longing at the same time to surrender to a burning passion.

From the seedy, ramshackle apartments, the frustration of failed auditions, the relative merits of acting teachers and schools, the catch-22 of Actors' Equity, the anxieties, perils and hilarious adventures of those who have to appear nude onstage, along with the tiny theatres in the West Village, full of plays that were new and forgettable - the novel is a veritable smorgasbord of atmosphere and brightly lit drama. The author offers up the tantalizing symbolism of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya for the final denouement, the role Edward's big break but where a suicide causes Madeleine to slowly unravel on stage, her mind slipping around the edges. Of course, the slow simmering of Guy's mendacity brings Edward to see red as he watches his arch nemesis turn into an egocentric Machiavellian devil incapable of seeing himself as anything but wronged. Mike Leonard August 09.

"The Confessions of Edward Day" is light on its feet, packed with the energy of a good thriller and pulls you in like a gripping Patricia Highsmith--almost as if Highsmith had found a slightly more literary voice. Even the New York setting evokes Highsmith's work and both Edward Day and his friend-nemesis Guy Margate display the determined, relentless drive of some of her darkest characters. Just when I thought "The Confessions of Edward Day" might morph into a soap opera (such as during the summer theatre scenes in Connecticut) a nifty surprise or two brought the plot roaring back. The ending, as neatly timed as "Noises Off," had the potential to turn trite--a gun backstage, "Uncle Vanya" on stage--but was buoyed by Martin's dazzling touch. When the denouement carries a sweet last morsel of suspense, you find yourself thinking of "Confessions of Edward Day" as the finest, most well-crafted book you've read in a long time and you ask yourself, "how did she do that?"

All three characters in the love triangle are up-and-coming actors when we meet them and one of the strengths of "Confessions" is living inside the head of an actor who is learning his craft and also watching others learn theirs.

Thinking about Guy's growth as an actor, Day thinks: "He could never see himself from himself. He created character from the outside looking in, he constructed a persona. Basically anyone can do it, politicians can do it nonstop. It's not, perhaps, a bad way to start. But Guy could never inhabit a character because he was himself so uninhabited. Nobody home, yet he wasn't without strong emotions. I didn't know that last part then."

The writing is brisk, clever. This will be one of the fastest 286-page books you might ever read.

You inhale in a few gulps and yet try to relish each breath.

Samples:

"Their applause sounded like dried peas rattling in a can."

"He gave me another long, magnified look, opening and closing his prune lips a few times like a fish trying to catch a wafer of food in an aquarium."

The relationship between Day and Margate is prickly, tense and full of foreboding. When Margate rescues Day from drowning in the ocean early on, we know the debt will play a significant role. And that's just it--the roles, the conflicts between inner dreams and what you let your friends and associates see--and what you don't let them see.

The value of *The Confessions of Edward Day* is primarily in its evocation of the milieu of the 1970s theatre scene in New York. It nicely captures the struggles of young actors to ply their trade, and works to connect that to questions of selfhood and identity.

Stylistically, its well-written enough, and the plot is fine, as it hinges largely on a doppleganger device that never quite works. The cover image suggests an almost Magrittean exploration of identity, image and emptiness, but what we mostly get is a blend of some pretty straitforward genres: the romance plot, the kunstlerroman, and the double. The kinds of identity-as-performance lines of thinking that are, frankly, ripe for the picking in a novel with this set up, never materialize, and in the end, the novel turns out to be a pretty good (but not great) tale, but little more.

Valerie Martin's Confessions of Edward Day (Phoenix 2010) is a first-person narrative told by a successful actor , Edward Day, who is rescued from drowning by Guy Margate, a failed actor and his Doppelgänger. The action, in and around Broadway, covers several decades, as Edward slowly climbs the ladder of fame, while his rude and arrogant rescuer keeps bobbing up to haunt him, physically and spiritually. The plot is thickened by the fact that both men love the same woman, the beautiful but fragile star Madeleine. All three thespians are deeply scarred psychologically and attempt equilibrium through paying parts, both in life and in the theatre.

The novel has a compulsive tension about it, neatly resolved in the dénouement, which takes place in the dressing-room in the middle of a performance of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, with the stage lovers Edward and Madeleine united after many years of estrangement. But what about Guy, who has in the meantime married his rival's leading lady? Guy is the sardonic outsider looking in, hated by Edward and tolerated by Madeleine, who ultimately confides to her lover that her husband is impotent. But can we believe her? And does it matter? It does to the tormented Edward who, while he frequently `possesses' his beloved, is in other ways kept apart from her.
The book is saturated in theatrical lore and discussions of Method acting, mimicking, rehearsals, Equity cards, try-outs, call-backs and their lack, plus all the financial and psychological traumas inherent in the profession. It abounds in taut dialogue, where jealous and aspiring actors indulge in self-analysis and agonise over their genuine or fake feelings for themselves, others and the theatre as a vehicle for consolation or self-expansion. They emerge as a catty lot, terribly insecure, jealous of others' successes, but sycophantic where necessary. Under the varnish, hatred and contempt are rife; contempt of self, others and even the audience. Here is Edward Day, having possibly been exposed as a flop by Guy's agent, working himself up into a tizzy:

I recalled, with grim specificity, the matinee. Matinees were never strong, everyone knows this. Old people with hearing aids come to matinees. Even if there was something to get in a play ... they wouldn't get it, so why waste the energy .... Why in hell had Guy's vaunted agent chosen a matinee to check out my potential? ... He [Guy] was distracted by his own reflection in the mirror. He frowned, first at himself, then at me. `She's a busy woman,' he said. `She had to fit you into her schedule. I didn't know when she would come. She only did it as a favor to me.' I chucked the tissue into the trash can. `Do me a favor, Guy,' I said. `Don't do me any more favors.'

The novel begins arrestingly: My mother liked to say that Freud should have been strangled in his crib, provoking the reader to ponder over mother-son relationships. And soon we learn that Day, the third son, was his mother's favourite and that before she committed suicide she had made several abortive calls to him. Guilt, both over neglect of a mother in crisis and over a debt owed to the man who saves his life, marks him for life. Although sexually ardent he becomes a man who cannot feel. He has little time for dependents, old or young. He is hungry for stage success, which he achieves, but at a cost. Yet we come to like him and unwittingly take his part against Guy Margate, his self-sacrificing antagonist and near-double in appearance.

Beneath the shimmer of the stage lie dark questions. Theatrical success comes at a price. In the novel it can and does destroy lives. Significantly, and for diverse reasons, all three protagonists remain childless and married life makes nobody happy. Sex works best when the partners become somebody else - there are many stage-simulations, enjoyed by both protagonists and applauded by the supporting cast. As in life, the men here have fantasies about sex, denying impotence and exaggerating performance. But Madeleine, who later aborts, is seemingly made pregnant by the impotent Guy rather than the randy Edward. Freud shows us what we prefer not to know, and that we can live with ourselves only by repressing the truth. Quite possibly both men are lying, and Madeleine too when she reveals her husband's impotence.

As with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw the author ends her novel on a note of ambiguity. We see the action through the eyes of a narrator who is not entirely reliable. Guy's and Madeleine's stories would undoubtedly be different, and no more reliable.

Valerie Martin has appended to the novel a set of Reading Group Notes: a plot summary, an account of her fascination with the stage and a series of A-level type questions for discussion. These may encourage further thought and discussion, but I was quite satisfied with the novel as it is. The best questions, after all, are those one asks oneself.

I enjoyed the novel as it is and put off other important matters to finish it. I have only one or two quibbles that, as usual with me, concern matters of style, of appropriate language. Sometimes - thankfully not too often - I was brought up sharply by incongruous terms or inflated diction. Thus Edward, on meeting his beloved after some time, `drank in her presence.' He describes the actress playing Sonya as `a collection of outraged nerve ends.' Going home to his unheated apartment he finds that `somewhere between he first and second landing a memory eluded the thought police and burst into the full sensory-surround screen of my consciousness.' I was not entirely convinced that this metaphorical pomposity belonged to Edward.

In Confessions, Valerie Martin creates a convincing protagonist of the opposite sex, a tough and not often successful task for any writer. Martin is also very good on the lives of actors trying to succeed in New York's theater world. In another early scene, she pushes her readers into a near drowning experience. It's gripping and scary reading. All this is a backdrop to a romantic triangle and rivalry. A big continuing question for me throughout the novel is whether Edward Day is a reliable narrator. Most reviewers here seem to take his reliability as a given -- I'm not so sure especially when his immediate reaction to the sudden unavailability of his leading lady (and another leg of the romantic triangle) is how hard it's going to be on him having to adapt to an understudy's read of the role. In other words, I wondered throughout if Edward Day is acting in his writing just as he acts on a stage. Yes or no, and I certainly could be wrong, this novel is a great read.

This is a better than average novel with excellent characterizations and a notable avoidance of formulaic writing. As a result, there are many enjoyable twists and turns that contribute to a very high interest level. The context is one of a group of self-centered young actors sturggling for success and recognition--romance, rivalries and backbiting abound. Reminded me a bit of those hilarious and sad tales of academia in which the high maintenance protagonists become so involved with each other one never knows how it will all be resolved. Highly recommended.

What a wonderful treat this book is! I tend to forget Valerie Martin. On the one hand, this means that I end up missing her novels. On the other hand, I get to rediscover her often which sort of fulfills my fantasies of re-reading various books & authors for the first time all over again.

I spent most of my twenties & thirties in theaters. First as an actor & later as a director with my own production company. Acting was fun because it provided me with an opportunity to explore sides of myself that I tended to avoid & to do things I'd probably never ever do in my real life. Directing, however, was my ultimate love in the theater. Where else do you get to interrogate text prior to making it get up and walk around?

The Confessions of Edward Day is the memoir of Edward Day, an actor reminiscing about his salad days in the New York theater world of the 1970s where everyone was a student of Stella Adler or Sanford Meisner & living hand-to-mouth from audition to audition waiting for that big break. Edward Day is the definitive actor, a narcissist whose self-awareness is so thin that he can't see himself. Edward stands so far outside himself in observation of his emotions as material for his acting that he is essentially a non-person. Scarily, he is in many ways the most complete person in this tale of doubling & its consequences.

Ms. Martin is asking some big questions here: What is owed to someone who saves your life? What does it mean to be both an actor & a person? If you have a doppleganger, which one of you is real?

Ms. Martin's writing is, as always, superb. She manages to create characters who suck you into their worlds. She writes with a delicate menace that is reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith, but less bound to the thriller genre. This is a wonderfully written, compelling story that ended far too soon.

This book has been widely reviewed, attracting some eminent commentary, particularly in relation to its setting - 1970s Broadway - and insights into the acting profession. The 'confessions' are a pseudo-autobiography, from an author exploring acting from from the outside. All the more impressive, then, that real actors and critics have treated the book with respect.

As usual, Valerie Martin walks around her topics to observe all sides, and isn't scared of big themes. This time it is life and death, the Double, the Self and Other, the limits of what we can know. Above all, though, it studies the impact of a persecutor in your life.

Edward was one of four boys to a mother who had longed for a daughter. He was the most girlish of them and closest to his mother, but she abandoned her family for a lesbian relationship. Edward's first night of sex with a girl coincides with his mother's suicide. It leaves him with a wish to be other than he is. He declares that his acting isn't about narcissism or even self-expression, but rather the chance to be someone else.

A talented fellow actor later tells him: "I get myself from what I see you getting about me." But that is different to seeing oneself only through a persona, through an outer shell seen by others, like politicians crafting themselves around their images. That "is not, perhaps, a bad way to start", Edward tells us, but you truly find yourself as an actor when you discover and draw out your inner self, and subordinate it to your purposes.

Such subtlety distinguishes Edward from fellow actor Guy Margate. Guy sees himself only through a persona, even in moments of crisis. He is unaware, for example, of how his jealous gaze at Edward could be applied on stage. His gift for mimicry actually brings out the limitations of that form, its distance from true acting; mimics, we're told, are rarely good actors.

The story turns around Guy and Edward. They are both aspiring actors, very similar looking, chasing the same parts. In one scene they actually stare at each other's reflections in the mirror. They pursue the same woman, fellow thespian Madeleine. This 'double' stuff is so blatant that we are being invited, I think, to look beyond it.

The reader first encounters Guy in the act of saving Edward's life. One night Edward swims out from a beach near the holiday house where he has been partying with other young actors (and seducing one of them), but gets caught by a riptide. Guy swims out and pulls him free, but from then on Guy is toxic for Edward. Like Edward's mother, Guy follows the gift of life with small but ongoing doses of death.

Guy sets Edward up, puts him in a bad light whereever possible, overpowers him in any social situation he can. He finds and plays on weak spots, sends varied signals of menace. A true proficient, he also seeks to disorient Edward through moments of phoney friendship.

The biggest problem for Edward is Guy's parasitic hunger for his life. His hard-won bits of money will do for a start. Then there is the issue of Edward's latent theatrical talent. Perhaps Guy senses that whatever his own short terms successes he is hollow as an actor and person. The "dead gazing upon the living", he fastens on Edward, he will never just drift away.

Perhaps it amused a female writer to study rivalry between men.

Above all, it is a fight over the fellow young thespian Madeleine. Within this triangle another theme of the book plays out: the limits of what we can know of the world and one another. We see only through Edward's eyes, so a lot of their interplay is hidden. But Guy's cold commentary on Edward suggests that our enemies have insights about us, knowledge we ourselves lack or won't look at.

In these memoirs Edward does not give Madeleine's personality the same attention as Guy's; indeed, once he has her for himself his interest in her declines, until Guy makes another move on her, and the story darkens.

Madeleine's vagueness contrasts with the dazzling power of Marlene Webern, as she blazes briefly through Edward's career. An older, accomplished performer, Marlene sees deeply into Edward and shocks him to life as an actor. He lusts for her yet she is really the Good Mother he's missed, and whom Guy will never have.

At one curious moment early in the book, when Guy and Edward walk away from the noctural beach rescue, Guy insists that they already know each other. Perhaps so: his animosity to Edward is already fully formed. In that case Edward as autobiographer has left many blanks, and has let this anecdote slip through a calculatedly false account of their relationship. Some reviewers have taken this approach and one interpreted Edward himself as a monster. But I think it would be more in keeping with the story to understand Guy's assertion as the first of many ploys to knock his enemy off balance. In that case his hatred of Edward had ignited only hours before, during a the party in which Edward was busy with Madeleine, still blessedly unaware of Guy's existence.

Written in the style of an intimate memoir, The Confessions of Edward Day delves into the daily lives of a group of struggling stage actors living in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. Edward Day is the first person narrator and the undeniable star of this novel. As his career unfolds, we follow Ed through acting school, numerous auditions and call-backs, conflicts with friends and family, and even a summer season spent in a Vermont theater company. Throughout it all, Ed makes the most of the insignificant parts he lands, always hoping for the next big break and waiting tables between shows to pay his rent.

Through the engaging and honest voice of Ed Day, Valerie Martin writes with authority about the uncertain and stressful world of stage actors. Indeed, Martin so successfully inhabits the life and voice of Ed Day that she all but disappears from view. Ed's charisma and motivation drive the action, most of which centers around a complicated love triangle and Ed's ongoing power struggle with a rival actor. With this quick-paced and intelligent novel, Martin delivers a riveting look inside the psyche of an actor.

I give a novel five stars for one reason: it needs absolutely no improvement on any level, in any way, shape or form. And POW! This one gets five stars from me. I loved Edward, I loved his honesty and the way he tells his story. Edward is completely self-absorbed, but I was pulling for him the whole way through. And how about that creepy Guy Margate? I loved how just when I started to kind of let myself forget about him, he'd pop back up with some sketchy request or some curious information. I found this one in Bookmarks (a really great magazine of book reviews). It had given it a good review. I also loved the setting of New York in the 70's. If you haven't read it yet, I'm jealous, you're in for some fun.