https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/16/actress-anne-enright-review

Anne Enright’s novel about a daughter unpicking her famous mother’s life is hugely diverting

Anne Enright’s new novel opens with a question: “People ask me, ‘What was she like?’ and I try to figure out if they mean as a normal person: what was she like in her slippers, eating toast and marmalade, or what was she like as a mother, or what she was like as an actress – we did not use the word star.”

The actress is Katherine O’Dell and her daughter, Norah, tells her mother’s story, intertwined with her own. There is another question: why did Katherine go mad? The people who ask, Enright imagines, are fearful: “as though their own mother might turn overnight, like a bottle of milk left out of the fridge”. She reminds us that remembering a mother has its limitations – there will always be a vanishing point beyond which the rest is guesswork. And O’Dell’s story may be further complicated by the possibility that she was at her most real on stage.