BookBrowse Reviews Mona Acts Out by Mischa Berlinski

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Feeling pressure at the prospect that her career has peaked, a renowned stage actress ditches Thanksgiving dinner with her family to reconnect with a disgraced mentor.

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It's Thanksgiving, and Mona Zahid is dreading the day's inevitabilities. She will spend most of her time at home preparing Thanksgiving dinner while being interrogated by her father-in-law about Shakespeare and authorship, listening to her mother-in-law grouse about the latest drama in her book club, and tiptoeing around her dead sister's daughter, her beloved niece Rachel, with whom she had a blowout argument only weeks ago. This will play out while Mona's husband and son have escaped for the morning to play Ultimate Frisbee in the park. Pair all of this with the fact that she is just weeks away from playing the role of her life—Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra—and Mona is resigned to spending the holiday heavily self-medicated in order to endure the tide of her family and the underlying pressure that comes with a multi-faceted acting role.

But just as Mona tells her family that she's going out for parsley and taking her dog with her, a postcard arrives with her own face on it; a picture of her onstage as Lady Macbeth, printed years ago by the Disorder'd Rabble theater company. On the back, a message from Mona's estranged mentor and the former owner of Disorder'd Rabble, Milton Katz: "Call me. I am dying, Egypt, dying: Give me some wine, and let me speak a little. Ever loving, ever yours, ever Milton." What follows is a spontaneous walk through New York City—wandering in grocery stores, idling on park benches and in the local Starbucks, and calling on old friends—as Mona contemplates Milton's message and his illustrious, dubious presence in her career trajectory.

Not everything is as it appears to be in Mona Acts Out. Both laugh-out-loud funny and painfully real, the book seems to juggle two opposing forces in its titular character: the spectacle of performance and the mundanity of the truth. Although she has a longstanding history with Milton, his recent fall from grace following a sexual misconduct scandal plastered in the Times has Mona parsing the layers of their professional relationship and eventual friendship, even as she navigates her own insecurities not only as an actress but also as a wife, mother, and aunt. Mona's sometimes delightfully skewed perspective is part of what makes Berlinski's third novel an entirely enticing and often surprising read.

The character work is what shines in Mona Acts Out. Mona takes up the entire five acts of the novel, minus an interlude featuring an aged Milton. She is both reserved in her outward life and unashamed in her inner life, and I had a wonderful time seeing both sides of her, from the performer politely nodding and listening to her in-laws in her own home to the off-stage actress meandering with Barney the dog down the streets of New York, pondering exactly what to do next.

Given the narrative is almost entirely written in Mona's perspective, her view of supporting cast members does not always align with reality. They seem to take on different roles in Mona's story: the way Mona sees them in her memories, and the way Mona sees them in the present. This is especially apparent in the characters of Milton and Vanessa, an actress who had a brief stint with Disorder'd Rabble. To Mona, Milton was always the brilliant, boisterous director with the audacity to act without care for consequences, and Vanessa was the ingénue whom Mona was equally jealous and enamored of. The subtle inaccuracies between Mona's memories and what readers soon learn is the truth not only make these supporting characters more interesting but also add depth to Mona's personality.

With character development and the exploration of Mona's memories taking center stage, the novel feels largely plotless. Throughout most of the day, Mona's physical path feels almost inconsequential up until the moments when she confronts the stars of her memories. Even so, both Mona and her memories have an irresistible pull—I felt myself wanting badly to keep up with her and see what would happen when, or even if, she would confront Milton. Would she feel the same as she always had about him? Or would everything be different?

This review first ran in the February 12, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.