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A Novel
by Ana Kinsella
A sweeping, witty, and wise novel following an actress and a writer-director—told through the plays they make together and the time they spend apart.
You could probably run cities on the energy generated between directors like him and actresses like her.
When Frida Slattery and John Reddan meet in a Dublin pub in 2006, neither can imagine how they will come to shape and define each other's lives. Frida is struggling to launch her acting career, while John is already gaining a name for himself as a director. From the first, they see in each other potential and the chance to create work that matters, though the lines between collaboration and exploitation, friendship and desire will prove dangerously slippery.
John decides to cast Frida as the lead in his next play, putting the pair on a path to success, fame, and critical acclaim. With the financial crisis looming, the next fifteen years take them from Dublin to London, New York, and Los Angeles, and through success and disappointment, joy and heartbreak. Careers are built, marriages made and destroyed, but through great distance and time, Frida and John can never quite shake the other. Though their connection is tested and stretched to the point of rupture, something remains that outlasts their work and the social transformations of the period. Tracing the complex, winding path of a relationship, Frida Slattery as Herself is an exhilarating, richly imagined examination of art, authorship, love, betrayal, and finding one's voice.
"This is a real treat of a novel; a gorgeous, immersive story which manages to be both epic and intimate, funny and wise. It is, among many things, a beautiful portrait of Dublin, and a story about difficult love, the lure of ambition and finding your creative voice. Tender and unexpected, the story of Frida Slattery and John Reddan will stay with me for a very long time." ―Roisín O'Donnell, author of Nesting
This information about Frida Slattery As Herself was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ana Kinsella is an Irish writer based in Dublin. As a journalist she has written for The Guardian, Frieze, Dazed, n+1, AnOther, and others. Her first book, Look Here: On the Pleasures of Observing the City, was published by Daunt Books in 2022.
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