Review: Molly Fox’s Birthday

Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden

Genre: Literature
Published: April 27th 2010 by Picador USA
Rating: 2½ of 5 stars

This entire novel takes place over the course of one day. That day happens to be Molly Fox’s birthday. Molly Fox is out of town and lets a long-time friend of hers borrow her home to stay at while finishing writing a play. This friend is the story’s narrator and as far as I can tell remains nameless throughout the novel. Instead of working on her play, she spends the day reminiscing about her 20 year friendship with Molly and another long time friend, Andrew. As she moves about the house she looks at all of Molly’s things, thinks about her relationship with Molly and Andrew, with her family and other friends over the years and how sometimes it feels like she never really knew them at all. As the story progresses there is much reminiscing, reflection and ruminations about the past by our narrator.

While the book was well written, and the writing was beautiful from a literary point of view, I found the story to be rambling and devoid of a plot. I kept waiting for something to happen but there was nothing compelling to keep my interest. Occasionally it would start to get interesting and then the musing on that subject would end and it would be on to some other rambling thought.

It’s not that I disliked the book; no, that wasn’t it. The book was readable but a bit too artsy for me. I just couldn’t like the characters enough to get involved with them; I found them boring, and as a result had to push myself to get through to the end of this book. That said, for those who enjoy this type of cerebral story it’s probably worth a read and there is a good chance they will like the book.

This was a difficult one for me to review because, while I found the quality of writing to be very good, the story itself was quite unsatisfying, Perhaps I just wasn’t delving deeply enough into the characters. Perhaps I just didn’t get it and someone needs to explain it to me, which makes me think this book might be better suited for a book club or discussion group to better understand it.
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Source: Review Copy provided by the publisher through LibraryThing.