Ana Kinsella's debut novel, Frida Slattery As Herself, is an impressive and charismatic work that revisits an actor and a director over various collaborations. The central characters are the eponymous Frida, aged 23 when the novel opens, and John Reddan, five years older. Both live in Dublin. Frida loves acting but has never had a significant role and didn't even get into drama school. John is a writer-director who has just had a play put on at a “real theatre”.
What's compelling about Frida is not necessarily what she says, thinks, or does, but the way she is, and a large part of that lies in the physicality Kinsella writes into her. Frida, we learn, is “addicted” to the theatre. “Every time she came off stage she felt like a prizefighter. The curtain fell in the community theatre and there she was, rolling her neck, bobbing on her feet.”
However, Frida's acting aspirations are going nowhere. She eventually confides in her friend Catherine, who at university was a much more successful actor in student productions but now has a proper job (“She owned an espresso machine and Frida lived in a bedsit”). “I just want something to happen,” Frida says. Catherine introduces Frida to John. They meet in Kehoe's pub, then he asks Frida to accompany him on an errand which turns into a long, mystifying walk through Dublin, during which he interviews her. She asks in return what he is working on: “Are there any roles for women in their early twenties?” To which he responds, “Is that how you think of yourself, Frida? As nothing more than ‘a woman in her early twenties’?”
Something sticks for both. John, we learn slowly, is taken with Frida – with her looks, but also that she's comfortable telling him what she thinks. Frida is preoccupied with John, perhaps for the possibilities he represents. “Was it possible to have a crush on someone you didn’t want to kiss? What was that called?”
The 12 sections that follow see them working on projects together, as well as living in different cities (London, Los Angeles, New York) between 2005 and 2021. They take a one-woman show to secondary schools around Ireland, driving in John's car and staying in budget B&Bs. Some work is more glamorous: by the time both are in their 30s, Frida does a stint in a popular US television show, and John is a successful theatre director with a play that goes to Broadway. They date for a while, split up, betray each other in different ways, and orbit each other's careers from afar.
In a way the engine of the book is romantic – will they end up together? – but while this keeps the plot ticking over, the magic of their connection comes, pleasingly, in their creative collaboration. Frida in particular is a delightful character because her spontaneity and self-doubt make her feel so authentically real; John, a thinker, is perhaps slightly less interesting. Nonetheless, the most enjoyable parts of the book are when they are together, writing, improvising, rehearsing, experimenting. Their symbiosis makes sense: Frida is an actor who can't quite see her own charisma, John a director who realises his best material comes from the people he works with, and particularly from Frida.
Inside the reliable pull of a well-written love story, Frida Slattery As Herself is a skilful, unusual novel – clever, ludic and unexpected in the way of good theatre. Published by Scribner (£16.99), it is a must-read for fans of contemporary fiction.
