Playing Sarah Bernhardt

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Joan Givner is the author of five short-story collections, the novel
Half Known Lives, and major biographies of Katherine Anne Porter and
Mazo de la Roche. The title of her latest novel is somewhat misleading
in that Sarah Bernhardt plays a minor role in the book compared to Mazo
de la Roche, the Canadian novelist who was one of the most successful
writers of the 20th century.

Unable to remember her lines while playing Sarah Bernhardt, Harriet
assumes that her career as an actress is over. When she is offered the
role of Mazo de la Roche in a production written by an amateur
playwright and being performed in Saskatchewan, Harriet is willing to
take the risk of further humiliation in the hopes of reviving her
career. It turns out that the memory-challenged Harriet was selected for
the role because the playwright is writing a biography of Mazo de la
Roche and Harriet possesses the key pieces of a sexual puzzle the
erstwhile biographer is seeking to solve.

Mazo de la Roche was not only successful, but incredibly secretive—a
trait that seemed to deepen as the success of the Whiteoaks saga gained
momentum. De la Roche lived for most of her life with her sister.
Nothing is known of the life of her adopted child, Antoinette, but
Harriet shared the same birthday as the child and even met her. As the
playwright draws Harriet into the vortex of the past during rehearsals,
her life becomes tangled with that of the mysterious Antoinette.

The aspects of de la Roche’s life that Giver explores, even those
that are fictional, have the ring of total authenticity. Playing Sarah
Bernhardt is both as complexly plotted as a mystery thriller and as
elegantly written as a literary novel should be.