Read By: Tessa Hadley

Oct 4, 2020

Tessa Hadley on her selection:

Deidre Madden is an Irish novelist whose books I love. Her writing has a beautiful lucidity and simplicity of style, free of all affectation; her stories begin so naturally and easily, and yet can take the reader down into the deepest - and sometimes the darkest - places. The lovely conceit of her novel Molly Fox's Birthday is that the writer has swapped homes, for a few weeks, with her best friend Molly Fox, a successful actor. What a brilliant invention - and yet so inevitable, now that Madden has thought of it! So the narrator, who is herself a playwright, wakes up on this first morning in the other woman's house in her absence: among her things, inside the shape of her life - and also inevitably, as time passes, among Molly's friends too, and caught up in the complex net of Molly's relations. It's such a richly intriguing way of exploring a life and telling a life-story.

Molly Fox’s Birthday at Bookshop.org

Intro and outro from "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

View all episodes

Categories: Literary Read By

Tags: Tessa Hadley

Did you know that donations cover nearly half of our costs?

As a nonprofit community and cultural center, The 92nd Street Y, New York relies on support from people like you. Your donation today helps us continue connecting you to the programs you love, no matter where in the world you are.

$ 50$ 100$ 250$ 500$ 1,000$ 2,500 $ Not now

All material accessed via the 92NY website (“content”) is protected by copyright under U.S. Copyright laws and is the property of The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association or the party credited as the provider of the content. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, display, perform, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any such content, nor may you distribute any part of this content over any network, including a local area network, sell or offer it for sale, or use such content to construct any kind of database. You may not alter or remove any copyright or other notice from copies of the content accessed via 92NY’s website. Copying or storing any content except as provided above is expressly prohibited without prior written permission of 92NY or the copyright holder identified in the individual content’s copyright notice.