Dublin, Midsummer: While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend, who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly's, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, whom she has known since university. Why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How have their relationships evolved over the course of many years? Molly Fox's Birthday calls into question the ideas that we hold about who we are; and shows how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This ruminative novel takes place over the course of a day, one of many a playwright spends in her actress friend's Dublin home over the course of a summer. The nameless narrator, an accomplished playwright to whom Irish actress Molly Fox has loaned her Dublin home, reflects on her 20-year-long friendship with Molly and the rise of both of their careers as she avoids the work of writing her next play. As she wanders through the house peeking at Molly's personal belongings, awards, and theater memorabilia, the narrator realizes that, in some ways, Molly is as much of an enigma to her now as when they first met. She also explores her relationships with a college friend, Andrew, and her older brother, Tom, a priest. There isn't much in the way of plot—it mostly consists of a series of flashbacks—but readers who enjoy this cerebral and meandering variety of first-person Euro-fiction will be enthralled at Madden's unassuming yet moving story. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* A finalist for England’s prestigious Orange Prize, Madden’s novel is a meditative exploration of the nature of self in relation to others. The unnamed narrator is an Irish playwright of some renown who has returned to Dublin to house-sit for her friend Molly Fox, an acclaimed theater actress who is taking a trip to New York before starting a run on stage in London. The narrator is hoping to make some headway on her new play, but Molly’s home calls up memories of their friendship, as well as of their mutual friend Andrew, an art historian who first caught the playwright’s eye when they were both in college logging long hours at the library. That there are unresolved feelings among the three won’t come as a surprise, but the revelations are handled with such a deft, subtle hand that they pass across the page like ripples in a pond. The joy of this elegant novel is in peeling back the layers to try to understand a person who is “the product of a stable background but simply couldn’t fit into it, whose whole life and work was an effort to understand this failure to connect.” --Kristine Huntley
--This text refers to the
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Literary Delight,
By
This review is from: Molly Fox's Birthday (Hardcover)
This story explores the lives and personalities of a small circle of highly talented, intelligent and very likeable friends. While friend Molly Fox, an unusually accomplished actress, is visiting New York, the narrator, an Irish playwright who lives in London, is borrowing Molly's house in Dublin while she tries to regenerate her creative juices. During the course of one day, which happens to be Molly's birthday, the narrator reflects upon their lives as well as those of other closely connected friends and relatives. From time to time, throughout the day, various people from the past and present are encountered, much like the visitations from Ebenezer Scrooge's ghosts. Described in highly accessible and very literate prose, each of these reminiscences and encounters add new revelations to the narrative. Eventually, the lives of these intelligent and appealing people are fleshed out, ultimately coming to a very satisfying conclusion as the day ends. I strongly recommend this novel to those who enjoy fine literature and well constructed prose.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rounded up to a 5 star, but probably a 4.5 for me,
By
This review is from: Molly Fox's Birthday (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I find myself drawn to Irish writers lately and when I had the opportunity to read an author I was unfamiliar with, I jumped at the chance.
"Molly Fox's Birthday" is a first person narrative which takes place over the course of a single day. The narrator is a close friend of Molly's who is using her house in Dublin for a couple of weeks while Molly is in New York and London. The story opens in the morning, closes with the evening, and the 220 pages in between interweave the narrator's story with that of Molly (a very famous stage actress who possesses an incredible voice) and Andrew who is another friend of theirs. The stories are told via reminisces and conversations with three different people who stop by during the day, not realizing that Molly is away. All kinds of relationship complications, career progressions and even the political hostilities taking place in Northern Ireland are addressed. The book is well-written and incredibly insightful regarding family/personal relationships. There were several times when I dog-eared a page since there was that beautiful moment of truth that leapt off the page. While not overly heavy, by any means, it does take patience to read since the narrative slips back and forth between past and present without warning so the reader needs to pay attention or risk getting lost. The fact that there are such beautiful, insightful passages also means it will be most appreciated by a reader who is not in a rush to get through it but willing to take the time to savor it. I enjoyed the novel immensely and would recommend it to people who like a more meandering read - not terribly linear or fast-paced, but very, very good. If you are fan of Irish writers, this would be one to try.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
That's It?,
By
This review is from: Molly Fox's Birthday (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
"Molly Fox's Birthday" is one of the most unsatisfying books I've ever read. I enjoyed it as I read it, for the most part, but when I came to the end, I wasn't left pondering the questions about art that writer Deirdre Madden raised. I wasn't considering the character development. I was just thinking, "That's it?"
The book is experimental with its structure. In the main action of the novel, nothing really happens. The unnamed protagonist, who is watching the house of her friend Molly Fox, just sort of walks around, thinking. She's trying to write a play and she's reached a block, so she spends much of the book reminiscing on her encounters with Molly, her friend Andrew, and her brother Tom. Her relationships with these people are very interesting and the experimental nature of the novel was brave, but in this exercise of tell-don't-show, there is virtually no character development, no apparent and concrete statement about theatre or writing or art, and no real attempt made to delve into the human condition. Deirdre Madden's writing teases that there will be and, as I mentioned before, the narrative poses questions about the way people relate to art, but it stops there. Instead of examining those questions, Madden uses her protagonist's busy mind as a way to move onto the next topic. Frustrating to no end. What took away from the book in a much bigger way was Madden's maddening dialogue. Every character speaks in the same exact way. It's a shame, because the characters have such well-developed backstories and Madden obviously put a lot of thought into who they are as people. But every line of dialogue is interchangeable. The dialogue is prosaic to the point where, were you to eliminate the quotation marks in the novel, it would be impossible to distinguish what was dialogue and what was description. For a book that tries to examine what it means to be a playwright, it's a shame that the dialogue is outright terrible. I didn't hate the book. There were even sections of it that I really liked. For every one of those, there was another sequence that went on for entirely too long (a scene where Andrew rambles on for many pages near the end of the book comes to mind), but there was a good chunk of decent, readable material in the middle of the novel. I wouldn't read it again, and I certainly couldn't recommend it to anyone. It reminded me of the much superior novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog. While The Elegance of the Hedgehog had a similar quiet and unconventional structure and posed a lot of the same questions about art as this novel did, The Elegance of the Hedgehog examined those questions and searched for answers through characters that spoke like, behaved like, and could be believed to be real people. Unfortunately, Molly Fox's Birthday does not have any of that going for it. 5/10
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