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Deirdre Madden (1) (1960–)

Forfatter af Molly Fox's Birthday

For andre forfattere med navnet Deirdre Madden, se skeln forfatterne siden.

11+ Works 754 Members 77 Reviews 1 Favorited

Værker af Deirdre Madden

Molly Fox's Birthday (2008) 308 eksemplarer
One by One in the Darkness (1996) 121 eksemplarer
Authenticity (2002) 73 eksemplarer
Time Present, and Time Past (2013) 69 eksemplarer
Birds of the Innocent Wood (1988) 49 eksemplarer
Remembering Light and Stone (1992) 36 eksemplarer
Hidden Symptoms (1986) 30 eksemplarer
Nothing is Black (1994) 24 eksemplarer
Thanks for Telling Me, Emily (2008) 15 eksemplarer
All Over Ireland: New Irish Short Stories (2015) — Redaktør — 15 eksemplarer
Snakes' Elbows (2006) 14 eksemplarer

Associated Works

The Ante-Room (1934) — Efterskrift, nogle udgaver206 eksemplarer
The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999) — Bidragyder — 151 eksemplarer
Painted with Words (2012) — Forord — 5 eksemplarer

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One by One in Darkness by Deirdre Madden i Orange January/July (august 2011)

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Deirdre Madden had lurked under my radar until Remembering Light and Stone, but even then I was sceptical. It wandered aimlessly yet I was happy to be carried along by the strength of its sensual language and melancholic introspection. But surely this is just a one hit wonder! Luckily for me, this genre - one of my faves - seems to be exactly Madden's wheelhouse.

Over the course of a day, we're taken through years of relationships and history as the protagonist reveals her memories like a colour linocut. True feelings are hinted at just beneath the surface. There are lots of thinking and monologues but it never stagnates. There are some of my favourite archetype characters like the Illusive Successful Chameleon Friend and the Academic Aesthete, and the semi/less-successful Outsider who forms an unlikely relationship with them and catalogues it all. In a lesser writer, I would've rolled my eyes, but Madden elevates it all.

Even now as Madden subtly establishes herself as one of my potential faves, I struggle to pinpoint her elusive mastery. But mastery it really is, and I'll have to start expanding my Madden collection.
… (mere)
½
 
Markeret
kitzyl | 38 andre anmeldelser | Dec 3, 2023 |
A particularly poignant journey through one woman's thought-world. As an artist and playwright the unnamed narrator takes us through the longest day of the year, June 21st - which also happens to be the birthday of her long-time friend Molly Fox, explaining the title. It is a lovely contemplative story that brings insight into how eventful an uneventful day can really be. "Molly Fox's Birthday" is a keen analysis of how the seemingly mundane can trigger deeply moving and impactful moments in one person's life. From her thoughts in the early morning hours to contemplating how to deal with her own troubled romantic relationships the story is like one of the bees making it's way from flower to flower in Molly Fox's front garden. It is beautifully written in a strong Irish tradition reminicent of Oscar Wilde or James Joyce. It is a wholly feminine narrative that proves itself worthy of the multiple literary accolades. While charming and intriguing it is a story that brings to light the hidden life that plays out in everyone's mind through their thoughts however scattered they may first appear to be. A wonderful study in mindfulness!

I am very grateful for having been awarded this book through a GoodReads GiveAway!
… (mere)
 
Markeret
AmandaPelon | 38 andre anmeldelser | Aug 26, 2023 |
A gentle, slow-paced character-based novel that takes place over the course of one day: the longest day of the year. Narrated by a playwright whose name we never learn, there are well-crafted reminiscences, interspersed with a few events as the day progresses.

The novel examines perceptions, the way we present ourselves to other people, and how different friends can see the same person through different lenses. Quite thought-provoking, and beautifully written. But not for people who like a lot of plot, or fast action.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2023/07/molly-foxs-birthday-by-deirdre-madd...
… (mere)
 
Markeret
SueinCyprus | 38 andre anmeldelser | Jul 27, 2023 |
Claire and Nuala, cousins in their thirties, have had little to do with each other over the years. While Claire attended art school, lives a hand-to-mouth existence, and has remained single, Nuala studied economics in university, is well-to-do, married, and a new mother. As a young woman, Nuala’s mother, Kate, had disowned backward Donegal for more-exciting Dublin, changing her accent in the process. She died a year before the story opens, and we’re told Nuala hasn’t been right since. She’s taken to going on shopping sprees, purchasing luxury items for which she has no need or use. More alarming to herself and her husband, Kevin, is her sudden kleptomania. Her sticky fingers pinch worthless, insignificant objects, mostly from restaurants and cafes: teaspoons, ashtrays, sugar bowls, and partially-filled teapots. She hasn’t a clue why she’s doing it. Her GP tells Kevin that Nuala is having a “crisis.”

Arrangements are made for Nuala to travel from Dublin to Donegal, where Claire, now a visual artist, lives a spartan existence in a run-down stone house on a remote headland. Nuala is to stay for the summer to sort herself out, but the understanding is that she’s not to infringe on Claire’s strict painting routine. While there, Nuala makes friends with Anna, a retired interior designer from Holland, who spends her summers in Ireland. Anna’s husband died three years ago and she is saddened about her inability to come to any resolution with him about his infidelity and the dissolution of their marriage when their daughter was ten. Anna is even more troubled by her estrangement from her now adult daughter, Lili, who she feels blames her for the breakup of the family.

Madden’s novel has only the barest skeleton of a plot—too bare, too skeletal, I’d say. There’s a lot of soft tissue here, with only a fragile frame to hang it on. Probably the most significant event that occurs after Nuala’s arrival in Donegal is her failure to return to Claire’s home one evening, a disappearance that causes Claire to make a frantic phone call to Kevin in Dublin.

I was interested enough in the book to finish it, but I found it unsatisfactory overall. None of the central characters is particularly convincing; each in her own way seems only a mouthpiece for the author. Claire’s ongoing interior monologues are about art—scale and colour—and creative work in general. Anna ruminates on relationships and holds forth on Irish life and culture. Nuala? It’s hard to say. She is the most indistinct and least likeable of Madden’s women. The “crisis” of this passive and self-centred woman is one of the least convincing I’ve ever encountered in fiction.

Initially, the reader assumes Nuala’s psychological malaise is due to a combination of postpartum depression and grief, but, no, it’s vaguer than that. The baby figures so little in the story that one wonders why it’s there at all, and Nuala churns up only a few memories of her mother. The most significant of these is from Nuala’s childhood: on a family road trip back to Donegal, her mother had vomited in a hotel bathroom and asked Nuala to keep this secret from her dad. The incident suggests the woman was either pregnant and subsequently miscarried or aborted the child, that she had an eating disorder, or that the idea of returning to the Donegal of her childhood was more than merely figuratively sickening. As an adult, Nuala regrets that she did not know Kate as a woman, only as her mother. This doesn’t seem quite the thing to induce a life crisis, however. Mostly, Madden repeatedly tells us that Nuala is “baffled” by life. Unfortunately, her bourgeois bafflement does not make for much drama. An intense dark night of the soul it is not.

I’ve read several of Madden’s books, and this is my least favourite. For all her character Claire’s musings about the spiritual energy of places—natural and human—and about the power and satisfaction in making of art, the novel she appears in is strangely flat and lifeless.
… (mere)
½
 
Markeret
fountainoverflows | 3 andre anmeldelser | Oct 14, 2020 |

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Statistikker

Værker
11
Also by
3
Medlemmer
754
Popularitet
#33,729
Vurdering
½ 3.7
Anmeldelser
77
ISBN
83
Sprog
6
Udvalgt
1

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