Molly Foxs Birthday

And in doing so, she conquers her writer's block and creates this novel, “Molly Fox's Birthday.” Madden's book, a finalist for the Orange Prize.
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Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Shortlist To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Molly Fox's Birthday , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Feb 22, switterbug Betsey rated it it was amazing. In this contemporary but timeless novel about relationships, identity, and home, Madden embraces the acting and playwright professions as central to the exploration of the human condition.

Molly is a celebrated stage actress, a woman who seems mousy and nondescript in person but is charged with charisma on-stage. Moreover, she has a bewitching voic In this contemporary but timeless novel about relationships, identity, and home, Madden embraces the acting and playwright professions as central to the exploration of the human condition.

Moreover, she has a bewitching voice. As the narrator struggles with writer's block during her visit, she traces Molly's steps through the house, fingers her treasures, sits in her garden, and recounts their friendship. Her memories includes their mutual friend Andrew, a successful TV art historian, specializing in memorials; Fergus, Molly's troubled brother; and Tom, the narrator's devoted brother--a Catholic priest who is also a dear friend to Molly.

The day in question is June 21st, Molly's birthday, a date of penetrating significance that unfolds gradually through the narrative. Molly, Andrew, and the narrator have built firm and lucrative careers. Each has shed their native skin and taken on new identities that, paradoxically, manifest a more palpable singularity and congruity of self. Whether it is escaping traditional familial bonds or facilitating a triumph in artistic pursuits, the three friends have remained a touchstone for each other. Molly is the enigmatic force; Andrew is the medium of transformation; and the narrator relates through acute examination.

Sometimes she seems to me like a figure in a painting, the true likeness of a woman, but as you approach the canvas the image breaks up, becomes fragmented into the colours, the brushstrokes and the daubs of paint from which the thing itself is constructed. The narrator's musings often settle on Andrew, whose brother was a paramilitary Loyalist in the North and a poignant source of Andrew's pain. A dissection ensues in the narrator's mind as she digs into the deepest interstices of her psyche. She fuses the artifice of stage with the authenticity of life, recalling how an actor can be removed from the stage or a person can depart from your life but leave a resounding presence.

This kind of prose is rare and exquisite. Lean, poised, and elegant, the tenor is restrained and natural, dipped in elegiac quietude. The book packs a lot of punch in just over two hundred pages and leaves you exalted. Active silences peak into sublime epiphanies, and as the story spires, the characters inhabit you and burrow in the tender places of your heart.

My copy is littered with post-it flags.

Most of what I marked were passages that showed great insight into human nature. It is what I would call a quiet book and what others would call dull. The narrator reflects back on her friendships, especially with actress Molly Fox, and wonders about how well we can know the people we love. Jun 04, Mae rated it really liked it. The leisurely pace and construction of the novel almost forces the reader to slow down and relax no matter how hectic things are, and remember the good things in life are the smallest: Nothing much happens, yet the author manages to cover the nature of friendships, family, art, academics, success, failure, religion, even Irish political unrest — you name it.

The birthday in question happens to be June 21, the summer solstice, so you still have time to pick up a copy, clear that very day and spend a few hours enjoying the charms this book while the light lingers. Molly Fox's Birthday is the first of Madden's books which I read several years ago, and remains my favourite.

It is immediately entracing, and was just as good as I remembered it being upon my March reread. The structure and writing are taut, and the characters realistic.


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An understated novel by a similarly understated writer. Apr 29, Rebecca rated it it was amazing. It is beautifully crafted, quietly complex and contemplative. I didn't want it end. This book is about female friendship, it's set over the course of one day looking back in a stream-of-consciousness style. This book had a lot of qualities I'd usually look for in a book but somehow it just didn't click for me.

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I never felt that connected to the Narrator and, whilst she explored herself with regard to her relationships with other people, she never seemed to have an identity of her own. As the Narrator thinks about her relationship with Molly Fox supposedly one of her dearest fri This book is about female friendship, it's set over the course of one day looking back in a stream-of-consciousness style.

As the Narrator thinks about her relationship with Molly Fox supposedly one of her dearest friends I found it hard to understand why I should care about either of them let alone the both of them. It's a short read but also unsatisfying. I won't deny it's technically well written but I just didn't find it engaging. View all 3 comments. Aug 02, Paul Secor rated it really liked it Shelves: A quiet, gentle novel with mystery, pain, and strength beneath its surface.

Women's Prize for Fiction Molly Fox's Birthday - Women's Prize for Fiction

I loved the style of writing in this book and found all three main characters really interesting. One of the best books I've read in a while. Mar 31, Theresa rated it really liked it Shelves: Very insightful and an excellent read. Apr 22, Friederike Knabe rated it liked it. Molly Fox is a well known and highly respected actor.

While staying in New York, her friend, a well-known playwright, preparing for her next "project", is staying in her house in Dublin. The unnamed and self-declared closest friend and admirer, is the narrator of this ode to love and friendship as she spends a day, Molly's birthday, reflecting on her friend, her own situation and the close relationships that have influenced her life since she met Molly some twenty years.

Deirdre Madden draws the Molly Fox is a well known and highly respected actor. Deirdre Madden draws the reader quickly into a web of memories, recollections, meandering musings that glide effortlessly from one important person in her heroine's life to another, jumping through timelines, back and forth, with the greatest speed, peeling off one layer of her inner life after another.

The house of an absent friend of long standing can easily trigger many and diffuse, even conflicting reminiscences and it does so in this novel.

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Molly's house, full of her assorted collectibles, is not only significant for leaving imprints of the multiple facets of the actor's very private persona that stand in sharp contrast to her public, charismatic stage image. Through her heroine Madden explores the different, often seemingly incongruous personality facets that individuals in public roles, especially actors, playwrights or priests, reveal when within their private spheres, their family or close friendships.

While Molly is a constant off-stage presence and the hook, skewed mirror or screen for all the narrator's other mental stage appearances, she herself remains opaque and contradictory Her brilliance on stage, her charismatic voice contrasts sharply with her shyness and "dowdy" appearance in a cafe next door. However, can we believe the narrator?

Is she a reliable source? She appears often surprised by a new facet she has discovered in her friend over time, often referring to herself as "obtuse" when it comes to understanding Molly. She is more definite in her assessment of her other close friend, Andrew. Andrew, her old chum from university days, stands out as a pillar of a trusted friend through thick and thin and their relationship comes across as mutually enriching and supportive. The concept of "human parallaxes" - perceived changes in the person observed from different angles - and introduced by Madden's protagonist, is more than aptly applied to all the central characters, including the narrator herself.

Yet, she appears to have been the least grounded, preferring to see herself as a reflection in the eyes of her friends.

Molly Fox’s Birthday

She can drift in and out of reflections on what should be decisive periods in her own life, only to switch the focus quickly back on some memory concerning one of her friends. Usually placing herself into a passive observer role, she nevertheless draws attention to herself all the time. While recognizing that memories and mental journeys can play havoc with time sequences and factual probabilities, at times the narrator's associations come across as somehow too predictable, the coincidences too convenient and her self-absorption or judgmental arrogance concerning others slightly overbearing.

As a result, her voice loses impact and can turn repetitive and flat instead. The day draws to a close with important questions unanswered, the narrator as central character left with less than shades of brilliance. Jun 22, Beth rated it really liked it Shelves: I think I have always understood the value of formulaic conversation and how it can make for real communication.

Such exchanges can forge a link with someone when there is deep affection but no real common ground. Andrew, with his impatient intelligence, would never understand this. But I know Molly would agree with me. Her relationship with Fergus is built upon a similar visceral warmth, the childhood bond that has never been broken. Closeness of that particular type is perhaps only possible wi I think I have always understood the value of formulaic conversation and how it can make for real communication.

Perhaps this was something that Andrew could understand, perhaps this was why he was haunted by the thought of Billy, but I wasn't sure that I could explain it to him. This is one of the reflections on life, relationships, art, and human purpose that fill Molly Fox's Birthday , a lovely novel from among the Orange Prize shortlist selections. I read it over a couple of days, and found myself eager to return to it, despite any real driving plot.

The characters are insightfully drawn, and the language flows smoothly, creating beautiful images along the way. I am not a gardener, but I found myself wanting to plant some of the flowers Deirdre Madden described in passing. The story is the tale of a single day in the life of a playwright who is staying at a friend's home while she is away, struggling to begin a new play in the wake of a recent flop.

Andrew and the narrator met while undergraduates at Trinity College Dublin in the s, reading Shakespeare and Wilde, on one occasion sleeping together, and generally discovering the importance of being earnest. Andrew then went off to Cambridge, where he underwent a Wildean self-transformation, losing his accent and acquiring a doctorate. But Molly is the lens through which everyone in this novel is seen. Set on Midsummer's day, her birthday, the book asks frequently "Who is Molly Fox?

Like many actors, Molly is superstitious. She has a neurosis about peacock feathers, won't say the name of "the Scottish play" aloud and has a penchant for outlandish remarks intended to unbalance the listener. Her upbringing was terrible; her brother Fergus is a depressive and an alcoholic and also, at one point, the wisest character in the novel. The book captures brilliantly the cost to the psyche for those who make a living "pretending, to put it crudely", to be someone else.


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    • It also suggests, at least implicitly, that perhaps we all do that. This is a novel about performance and artifice. Molly's house, itself a sort of performance, is established as an expression of her persona, the set for an unwritten play. Thus the narrator's transgressive presence is deeply involving.

    Review: Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden

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