Molly Fox's Birthday (by Deirdre Madden)

(Amazon UK link)

I’d never heard of Deirdre Madden, but when I spotted her novel ‘Molly Fox’s Birthday’ on a church bookstall, I was intrigued. The blurb on the back appealed, and there was a sticker on the front saying it had been short-listed for an award. So I paid my 50 cents and put it on my to-be-read shelf.

A year and eight months later, I picked it up to read. I wanted something fairly light-weight, and at first this seemed to fulfil my wishes nicely. The narrator is a woman of about forty, whose name we never learn. We meet her waking up on the longest day of the year, wondering at first where she is. Then she remembers, she’s in Ireland house-sitting for her close friend Molly Fox, who is in the United States. 

Molly, we soon learn, is an acclaimed actress, one of the few who truly seems to become the person she is playing. She likes theatre best, and the narrator is a playwright; indeed, they met, twenty years earlier, when Molly was one of the principal characters in a play written by the narrator - and it was a tremendous success. 

Most of the novel is introspective, taking place in the past. It’s written without chapters, although there are some section endings as the tale returns to the present day, or moves to a different memory. For the whole novel takes place over the course of just one day. 

The narrator recalls fondly her close friendship with Andrew, whom she met at university and who is now known as a TV presenter. She thinks about her brother Tom who is a Catholic priest. She contrasts her own chaotic but happy background with several siblings, mostly getting along, with Molly’s more difficult childhood. 

We never meet Molly, but we learn a lot about her: initially from the perspective of her close friend, but also from other characters who emerge. Molly never wants her birthday celebrated or even remembered, but her brother Fergus likes to mark it in some way, as do one or two other people who come into the narrator’s life briefly in the ‘present’ part of the novel, after being recalled in some detail in the past.

I found the style a bit frustrating at first, with so much reminiscing, and I kept wondering when the story was going to begin. But the writing is beautifully done, and I found myself more and more drawn into the story, even as I realised that there wasn’t going to be any real plot or movement. It’s entirely character-based, and while I might have found it dull twenty years ago, I found myself intrigued by the gentle revelations, thinking about what reality might be, and how we present ourselves to our families and friends.

I thought it very clever that the narrator, whose is the only mind we get into, is faceless and nameless, while Molly Fox, who is in New York, and has no viewpoint, feels like the main character.  

I guess this is ‘literary’ fiction, something I’ve only started to appreciate in the past few years, so hesitate to recommend it too strongly as many readers don’t appreciate this kind of novel. The only other writer I know of who produces this kind of observant, introspective writing that’s entirely about the different people is Anne Tyler, but in Molly Fox’s Birthday I didn’t find the satire or gentle humour that sometimes crops up in Tyler’s books. 

Nonetheless, I liked this book; if you want something different and like character-based books without much plot, this is a good one to try. It’s quite short - fewer than 230 pages - and very well written. I doubt if I’ll read it again, and don’t suppose I will remember the people for long, but I’m glad I read it. 

Review copyright 2023 Sue's Book Reviews