A RUMINATIVE SUMMER READ

It's hard to put a finger on what's so captivating about Deirdre Madden's "Molly Fox's Birthday". The novel, Madden's ninth, takes place over the course of a single day in the life of an unnamed narrator. The book's momentum is mainly a bad case of writer's block. And yet "Molly Fox's Birthday", which was shortlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction, is strangely difficult to put down.

The book begins with what sounds like the premise of a thought experiment or Hitchcock film: a stage actress named Molly Fox and her playwright friend switch houses for the summer, one in London and the other in Dublin, so that the playwright can finish her work and the actress can complete a recording. The book's consciousness belongs to the playwright, of whom we know little save for her gender, vaguely her age, and a few things about the relationships she uses to hedge against loneliness. And also her writer's block, which worsens by the moment: "Instead of one idea opening into another, growing and developing, I had watched my thoughts close down," she explains, "like some computer system into which a terrible virus had entered, deleting, destroying irrevocably."

The narrator floats among Molly's objects—her polka-dotted mug, linen dressing gown, rare-book collection—and thinks about the nature of acting and aging. From her we learn about Molly's troubled childhood and illustrious career. As with many actresses, Fox's age is a sore subject, and her refusal to acknowledge her own birthday is one of a few ways she maintains an uneasy distance from her friends. Jeannie Vanasco put it eloquently in the New York Times, observing that "the novel is structured as if the narrator were walking through a dark room, feeling the walls for a light switch. Nonetheless, it has form: the conflict, crisis and resolution are interior. It engages our attention and sympathy because the narrator wants to understand Molly. It is the intensity of the wanting that keeps us reading."

Indeed. In its ruminative quality the novel might remind a reader of Nicholson Baker's "The Anthologist", in which the narrator Paul Chowder is, similarly, a writer with a task to accomplish, a digressive mind and some sensitive emotional antennae. Where prose is concerned, however, it is Iris Murdoch to whom Madden inspires comparisons. Like Murdoch, she is spare with her prose, tends toward the philosophical, and shows an excellent ear for dialogue. "Molly Fox's Birthday" is a summer read for those who prefer the solitude of an indoor perch to the brightness of the beach.

"Molly Fox's Birthday" by Dierdre Madden was published by Faber & Faber in Britain last year; Picador has just released the novel in America

~ MOLLY YOUNG