Exit the Actress
By Priya Parmar (Touchstone, 2011)
Packaged to look confusingly like a Philippa Gregory or Lauren Willig novel, Exit the Actress has a tone and structures which distinguish it from a lot of mainstream historical romances. Its cast of characters, listed in the front of the book as if you reading a theater program, number in the dozens.
It doesn’t overload you with history, as Gregory tends to. It doesn’t get frilly and silly, which is what I love about Willig’s books. It’s written first-person, common for the form, but as diary entries rather than a long-form confessionals. The entries dart from the heroine’s personal life (from rags to riches, nearly back to rags) to her love life (particularly one professional one as a fine stage actress.
The diary, which pretends to have been penned in the late 17th century but is enlivened by contemporary-sounding exasperations:
“Grumble. I dusted and rinsed this old sea chest twice before setting this book down upon it to write, and I have still managed to get grime on my sleeve.”