The Confessions of Edward Day

In New York, in the 1970s, rents were cheap, love was free, and the explosion of theater venues off and off-off Broadway afforded aspiring actors the opportunity to work for nothing in no clothes. The great "method" teachers - Adler, Strasberg, Meisner, and Hagan - were still taking students. The quest for truth in acting was open to all.
After Edward Day joins his fellow actors for a summer weekend on the Jersey shore, his life is never the same. He is saved from drowning by the mysterious Guy Margate, a fellow actor with whom he shares both a marked physical resemblance and a serious attraction to the beautiful, talented, and much-too-available Madeleine Delavergne. Ever after, in spooky and mordantly funny encounters provoked by personal and professional jealousy, envy, and resentment, Edward is torn by his desire for Madeleine and his indebtedness to the querulous Guy. Yet, above all, Edward is on a quest for fame and he never entirely loses sight of his goal, which is to be a great actor and to move an unsuspecting audience to an experience of emotional truth. His relentless pursuit of artistic integrity brings him up against the disquieting fact that truth, in the theater as in life, is ever elusive and never inert.

VALERIE MARTIN is the author of eight novels, including Trespass, Italian Fever, The Great Divorce, Mary Reilly, and the 2003 Orange Prize-winning Property, and three collections of short fiction.