Shadowplay

Starred review from March 2, 2020
O’Connor’s high-spirited latest (after The Star of the Sea) puts ample flesh on the bones of the little-known story of the theatrical ménage involving celebrity actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, and Irving’s business manager, Bram Stoker. Composed (like Dracula) in epistolary style from diary entries, letters, recording transcripts, and the like, the narrative follows Stoker as he moves with his family from Dublin to London in 1879 to help Irving establish his Lyceum Theatre. Over the next quarter century the two indulge in a frequently bitter love/hate relationship—Irving drives Stoker mercilessly and cruelly taunts him for his literary ambitions. Via commentary from Terry on Dracula, O’Connor’s narrative suggests that Stoker likely channeled the personality of Irving and the drama of their contretemps into his tale of the imperious vampire scourge. O’Connor’s characters are magnificently realized and colorfully depicted by the virtues that define them: Irving’s egotism, Terry’s feminism, Stoker’s stoicism, and—for the brief time he appears—Oscar Wilde’s witticisms. The repartee O’Connor imagines between them is priceless, in particular when they refer to each other by their nicknames (“Chief” for Irving, “Auntie” for Stoker), and he fills the tale with numerous rib nudges that readers of Dracula will recognize. This novel blows the dust off its Victorian trappings and brings them to scintillating life.

March 15, 2020
Better known as the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker in his day job as general manager of London's Lyceum Theatre is the focus of Irish writer O'Connor's atmospheric new novel. Mind you, there are plenty of nods to his famous horror story, from a ghost in the theater's attic named Mina to a scene-painter named Jonathan Harker, plus the fact that the dreaded vampire bears a more than passing resemblance to Stoker's mercurial boss, legendary actor Henry Irving. Harker turns out to be a woman, a twist that suits the seething homoerotic currents between Stoker and Irving, who can also be found entwined in the naked arms of co-star Ellen Terry. Terry's voice as recorded in 1906--funny, bitchy, extremely shrewd about her acting partner's gifts and limitations--offers a welcome counterpoint to the sometimes overly dense third-person narrative of Stoker's tenure at the Lyceum and on tour in the late 1870s and '80s, grappling with Irving's neuroses while striving to snatch some time for his own writing. This is a tougher, colder work than Ghost Light (2011), O'Connor's previous fictional excursion into theatrical lives, and that novel's portrait of actor Molly Allgood's love affair with playwright John Synge was gentler than this one of Stoker's thorny relationship with Irving, a toxic blend of need, rage, resentment, and profound love. Still, the men's bond is as moving and more unsettling, proof that, as Stoker later tells Harker, "Love is not a matter of who puts what where but of wanting only goodness and respectful kindliness for the loved one." Irving seems less deserving of such kindness than Stoker's assertive wife, Flo, who makes sure he gets copyright protection for the vampire story his boss cruelly dismisses as "filth and tedious rubbish from first to last." Flo's tender letter to Terry after Stoker's death closes the novel, with another affirmation that "There are many kinds of love. I know that. He did, too." An uneven mix of Dracula and theater lore but a thoughtful exploration of the tangled nature of desire and commitment.

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Starred review from April 1, 2020

"In every being who lives, there is a second self very little known to anyone. It's the best part of you, the most interesting, the most curious, the most heroic." This epigraph greets readers at the start of this courageous, compassionate, beautifully realized historical novel about friendship, the passage of time, and our best selves. The narrative limns the lifelong relationship among three famous individuals connected to the Lyceum Theatre in Victorian London: Henry Irving, a flamboyant impresario and world-renowned actor who opens the Lyceum; Ellen Terry, also world famous as an actress and a favorite of Irving; and Bram Stoker, the young man Irving hires to manage the Lyceum and who will become posthumously famous as the author of Dracula. The result is an affectionate, tender story about everyday heroism, secret selves, and triumphs and tragedies on stage and in life and the many kinds of love that bind us together. Masterly historical novelist O'Connor (Star of the Sea) brings these friendships urgently to life in all their complexity, messiness, and grandeur. VERDICT Queasy readers shouldn't be put off by the darker elements of the story, e.g., Dracula, Jack the Ripper, foggy Victorian London; this work offers readers an authentic and deeply moving literary experience.--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

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