Molly Fox’s Birthday
Deirdre Madden

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synopsis

Dublin. Midsummer. While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly’s and that of their mutual friend Andrew, who she has known ever since university. But why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How do relationships evolve over the course of many years?

Exploring family, friendship and love, this is a novel about identity, calling into question the ideas we hold about who we are and showing how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined.

Deirdre Madden

is from Toomebridge, Co. Antrim. Her novels include The Birds of the Innocent Wood, Nothing is Black, and One by One in the Darkness which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel is Authenticity. She teaches at Trinity College Dublin and is a member of the Irish arts academy, Aosdána.