I will always remember - or think that I remember - sitting in a movie theatre watching Mulligan, my mother's face twenty feet high. Her cheek was a white cliff, a sweet wall, and a single tear - that first swelling bulb of water, trembling and light-filled, as it brimmed over. It would fill your outstretched arms. It was the size of a chandelier up there, waiting to fall.

This is my second Anne Enright, my first being The Gathering, which I read last year. I fell completely and deeply in love with that book so I was somewhat concerned that the next one I picked up wouldn't compare to it. While I did prefer The Gathering a little bit more, Actress didn't disappoint me in the slightest - in fact, I think it's wonderful.

Actress is about a daughter trying to understand who her mother was, who she truly was when she wasn't on stage or in front of a camera, and she's attempting to sort out the narrative of her mother's life while discerning what was real and what was part of the act. This novel feels as though it is the story of three people: Norah, her mother, and Katherine O'Dell. In spite of being the same person, her mother and Katherine are practically completely different people, strangers to one another, and Norah herself is left living in the shadow of both of these women. She rarely refers to her as her mother, calling her Katherine and sometimes her full name as though they were split identities that she had been interacting with her entire life. This distancing speaks volumes about their relationship and it's quite tragic that Norah seems to know who Katherine was better than she knew who her mother was. Throughout the novel she's trying to find the missing pieces, the gaps in the story that Katherine withheld from her, as though this will make her mother and herself comprehensible.

Enright's writing isn't for everyone. The best word I can use to describe it is that it's slippery - it's not as lucid as stream of consciousness but you do find yourself dragged by the current of it and it's at times difficult to find your footing. Past and present bleed into one another to such an extent that they become indiscernible from one another sometimes, and, even though she gives you the occasional dates and ages of the characters, Enright pretty much leaves her readers to sink or swim. This can be disorientating to a fault for some but, for me, I struggle against it initially and then just relax and trust Enright to take me where I need to be. You really fall into the motion of her writing and the story flows beautifully even if you can't quite keep track of when things are happening.

Reading this book really reminded me of all the Classic Hollywood biographies I read, books on Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, James Dean, and Judy Garland, and I'll be surprised if Enright doesn't read them herself or at least was inspired by them to write this novel. She situates her characters in the real world, interlacing the fact and fictional together much like Katherine O'Dell has done with her own life, and I didn't find it distracting like I sometimes do. It doesn't feel as though Enright is name dropping or stuffing the corners of her novel with recognisable names just for the sake of it, nor does it feel like she's using prominent names in a disrespectful way. It just added context to Katherine's life and they didn't steal the spotlight (no pun intended) away from the heart of the story - the relationship between a mother and her daughter.

It's a devastating reflection on identity and how we create ourselves, be it a new persona like Katherine or by understanding where you came from and how that has made you who you are today like Norah. Norah seeks context for her life and it is almost as though without it she cannot truly exist, and is quite heartbreaking that she'll never get all of the answers she needs.

I'll be very surprised if Actress isn't one of my favourite books of the year.