Be warned: this is a book for a certain kind of reader, one who brings no expectations to a book, one who likes to settle in with a quiet story, burrow among a wealth of description, detail and language. Shortlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize, the book gets off to a contemplative start and as one delves deeper, one realises the linear narrative does not stray from that contemplative path, not by a word or phrase.
The story is set in Dublin. Molly Fox is a well-known actress who is right now in New York. It is June 21, her birthday, and she has given over her house temporarily to a friend, another individual who has made her mark in the creative arts as a playwright. The friend, who remains nameless throughout, is the narrator and through her we get to meet Molly (in absentia), Molly's troubled brother Fergus, a mutual friend and TV celebrity Andrew, as well as a couple of other minor characters.
All of them have been etched in great detail, as has Molly Fox's house, her garden with the incongruous fibreglass cow, and pretty much everything else we come across in the book.
Universal emotions
The emotions are universal, despite the personalised and deeply introspective tone. They deal with nascent friendship, love, betrayal, deception, depression and compromise; Madden does not lessen the depth of these emotions; yet, she does not paint it in with too heavy a hand. The word ‘paint' is what comes to mind, given the pointillist manner in which we are introduced to the house, the village, the people, the narrator herself. When we enter Andrew's bedroom, we see it all: the paisley bedspread, the fountain pen in its box, the cream shade of the bedside lamp, the coloured tiles along the fireplace in which a fire has started to blaze merrily, all this backlit by the pink glow of twilight from the high windows.
The slow, insidious pull of theatre, its relentless demands, its obscuring of identity, all form the peg the story is secured firmly onto. Madden's turns of phrases are felicitous. She talks of rain that is a pleasure to watch because it makes of a house a haven. “I don't live in the north of Ireland any more but it has remained a constant, a touchstone, the imaginative source of much of my writing,” the narrator informs us and we understand that it is the author's voice. Ireland, indeed, is described lightly but with emotion. Then there is the description of a notice for a lost dog, a dangerous dog that pulls you in with its sheer whimsy, the idea that the owner of the canine would admit it is dangerous but bemoan its loss.
Measured pace
And it is only at the end that we realise we never did actually meet Molly Fox, we only got to tap into all her friend knows about her, thinks about her. Everything moves at such a measured pace, it could well gull you into believing there must be, there will be, a dramatic denouement coming up. As mentioned earlier, you don't read this book so much as enter its world. A quiet world but one that enriches. My only crib: Molly Fox's Birthday is one of those books you read, shut and forget.
Molly Fox's Birthday;Deidre Madden, Faber and Faber, £7.99
