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.