A review by caitlinxmartin
The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin
5.0
What a wonderful treat this book is! I tend to forget [a:Valerie Martin|10493|Valerie Martin|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]. On the one hand, this means that I end up missing her novels. On the other hand, I get to rediscover her often which sort of fulfills my fantasies of re-reading various books & authors for the first time all over again.
I spent most of my twenties & thirties in theaters. First as an actor & later as a director with my own production company. Acting was fun because it provided me with an opportunity to explore sides of myself that I tended to avoid & to do things I'd probably never ever do in my real life. Directing, however, was my ultimate love in the theater. Where else do you get to interrogate text prior to making it get up and walk around?
[b:The Confessions of Edward Day|6426472|The Confessions of Edward Day A Novel|Valerie Martin|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413z4jrpCLL._SL75_.jpg|6615830] is the memoir of Edward Day, an actor reminiscing about his salad days in the New York theater world of the 1970s where everyone was a student of Stella Adler or Sanford Meisner & living hand-to-mouth from audition to audition waiting for that big break. Edward Day is the definitive actor, a narcissist whose self-awareness is so thin that he can't see himself. Edward stands so far outside himself in observation of his emotions as material for his acting that he is essentially a non-person. Scarily, he is in many ways the most complete person in this tale of doubling & its consequences.
Ms. Martin is asking some big questions here: What is owed to someone who saves your life? What does it mean to be both an actor & a person? If you have a doppleganger, which one of you is real?
Ms. Martin's writing is, as always, superb. She manages to create characters who suck you into their worlds. She writes with a delicate menace that is reminiscent of [a:Patricia Highsmith|7622|Patricia Highsmith|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1217411179p2/7622.jpg], but less bound to the thriller genre. This is a wonderfully written, compelling story that ended far too soon.
I spent most of my twenties & thirties in theaters. First as an actor & later as a director with my own production company. Acting was fun because it provided me with an opportunity to explore sides of myself that I tended to avoid & to do things I'd probably never ever do in my real life. Directing, however, was my ultimate love in the theater. Where else do you get to interrogate text prior to making it get up and walk around?
[b:The Confessions of Edward Day|6426472|The Confessions of Edward Day A Novel|Valerie Martin|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413z4jrpCLL._SL75_.jpg|6615830] is the memoir of Edward Day, an actor reminiscing about his salad days in the New York theater world of the 1970s where everyone was a student of Stella Adler or Sanford Meisner & living hand-to-mouth from audition to audition waiting for that big break. Edward Day is the definitive actor, a narcissist whose self-awareness is so thin that he can't see himself. Edward stands so far outside himself in observation of his emotions as material for his acting that he is essentially a non-person. Scarily, he is in many ways the most complete person in this tale of doubling & its consequences.
Ms. Martin is asking some big questions here: What is owed to someone who saves your life? What does it mean to be both an actor & a person? If you have a doppleganger, which one of you is real?
Ms. Martin's writing is, as always, superb. She manages to create characters who suck you into their worlds. She writes with a delicate menace that is reminiscent of [a:Patricia Highsmith|7622|Patricia Highsmith|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1217411179p2/7622.jpg], but less bound to the thriller genre. This is a wonderfully written, compelling story that ended far too soon.