Fictionalized Bio of Early 19th Century Actress
I enjoyed Balint's novel The Salt Letters and had just run across some engravings of Harriet Smithson playing Ophelia, so I decided to give this one a try. The story is an interesting one: an Irish girl is taken on by a Dublin theatrical company, then Drury Lane, and finally becomes the toast of Paris, especially due to her innovative portrayal of the mad Ophelia, wearing a black veil and with pieces of straw stuck in her hair. I was very interested in Smithson's marriage to the composer Hector Berlioz, but Balint only gives us Harriet's imagined letters to their son and glimpses of Berlioz's obsessive courtship. For some reason, Balint decided on an odd structure. The letters, present-day, are interspersed with memories in random chronological order. Just as you are progressing through Harriet's first trip to Paris, you suddenly are shuttled back to her teenage years, living with a priest in an Irish village, then back to Drury Lane, back to Paris--there's no logic or connection in the structure at all, and it gets a bit irritating after awhile. I wouldn't say this is a great book, but it's relatively satisfying. I'm really looking forward to reading Jude Morgan's novel about Smithson, titled Symphony.
