Frida Slattery As Herself, Ana Kinsella
Frida Slattery As Herself, Ana Kinsella
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Frida Slattery As Herself
A Novel

Author: Ana Kinsella

Narrator: Jessica Regan, Darragh Hand

Unabridged: 11 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ecco

Published: 05/05/2026


Synopsis

A sweeping, witty, and wise novel following an actress and a writer-director—told through the plays they make together and the time they spend apart

You could probably run cities on the energy generated between directors like him and actresses like her.

When Frida Slattery and John Reddan meet in a Dublin pub in 2006, neither can imagine how they will come to shape and define each other’s lives. Frida is struggling to launch her acting career, while John is already gaining a name for himself as a director. From the first, they see in each other potential and the chance to create work that matters, though the lines between collaboration and exploitation, friendship and desire will prove dangerously slippery.

John decides to cast Frida as the lead in his next play, putting the pair on a path to success, fame, and critical acclaim. With the financial crisis looming, the next fifteen years take them from Dublin to London, New York, and Los Angeles, and through success and disappointment, joy and heartbreak. Careers are built, marriages made and destroyed, but across great distance and time, Frida and John can never quite shake the other. Though their connection is tested and stretched to the point of rupture, something remains that outlasts their work and the social transformations of the period. Tracing the complex, winding path of a relationship, Frida Slattery As Herself is an exhilarating, richly imagined examination of art, authorship, love, betrayal, and finding one’s voice.

About Ana Kinsella

Ana Kinsella is an Irish writer based in Dublin. As a journalist, she has written for The Guardian, Frieze, Dazed, n+1, AnOther, and others. Her first book, Look Here: On the Pleasures of Observing the City, was published by Daunt Books in 2022.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Madi on March 09, 2026

Review of advance netgalley copy— thank you to the publishers. 3.5/5, but rounding up on here. As someone who grew up acting and surrounding herself w/ (and hating and loving) creatives like both Frida and John, largely I enjoyed this read. Continuously though I wondered what someone outside of thes......more

Goodreads review by Suki on May 10, 2026

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. 4.25 stars. Frida, a young actress looking for work bumps into John, an up-and-coming playwright in a Dublin pub. John is instantly captivated and ends up writing a part in a play for Frida, leading them on a journey to her beco......more

Goodreads review by Niamh on May 16, 2026

I was very kindly given an e-ARC of this book via Netgalley and Simon and Schuster UK. Working in the arts, I've met dozens of Johns and dozens of Fridas. Maybe it's just my personality type, but I've wanted to shake some common sense into all of them the same way I wanted to shake it into these cha......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on April 05, 2026

This book does a lot of things well, but for me that only made the things it fumbled much more obvious. This is a book about art, about the fuzziness of creative relationships, and about the way MeToo shifted all of these things. It's not easy to do, Kinsella has given herself a really tough project......more

Goodreads review by Amie on May 05, 2026

Frida Slattery As Herself follows a young Irish actress trying to kick-start her career when she meets director John in a pub. Set over 16 years, the book is split up into parts, each one a specific time period and titled after the name of the play the characters are working on at that time. The rea......more