Actress 
By Anne Enright

I guess I just didn't get it. It didn't evoke much connection or emotion from me. 

The narrator is the daughter, Norah, of a B-list actress of the golden age of Hollywood. Though she was not truly Irish, her managers dyed her hair red, gave her an Irish stage name (Katherine O'Dell), and had her speak in a fake Irish accent. 

Norah documents Katherine's life through non-chronoligical tangents. From the beginning we know that Katherine shot a man, with whom she had history throughout her career, who was tortured with the pain of the injury for a decade before succumbing to the gunshot. Katherine was found effectively unfit to stand trial and withered away in and out of asylums for the remainder of her life. 

There is a lot of hardship and the journey Norah undertakes to understand her mother and her mother's experiences through the lens of adulthood rather than her childhood witness. I suppose there is something in that to be acknowledged. 

The writing style of the book is very fluid and enjoyable, but the content is disjointed and confusing, and, at times, mostly uninteresting.