REVIEW: Frida Slattery As Herself by Ana Kinsella

Are we holding onto the person, or the version of ourselves that existed when we loved them?
In Frida Slattery as Herself, Ana Kinsella traces a decades-long relationship between an actress and a director whose lives continually collide. The result is a thoughtful novel about ambition, nostalgia, creative obsession, and the people we can never quite leave behind.

There are books that ask whether two people will end up together. Frida Slattery as Herself asks a more interesting question: why do some people never quite leave us, even when we know they probably should?

Ana Kinsella's novel follows actress Frida Slattery and director John Reddan over the course of many years as their lives repeatedly intersect. They date, collaborate, drift apart, reconnect, and disappear from one another's lives, only to find themselves drawn back into each other's orbit. It is, on paper, a familiar story. In execution, it becomes something more reflective and far more interested in the realities of creative ambition than in traditional romance.

What Kinsella captures particularly well is the peculiar dissatisfaction that seems to haunt ambitious artists. Frida and the people around her are constantly pursuing the next project, the next opportunity, the next version of success. Every achievement is immediately replaced by a new goal. Nobody ever seems to arrive anywhere for long. The novel understands what it feels like to spend years chasing something you love while wondering whether reaching it will actually make you happy.

Frida herself is a compelling protagonist because she never feels settled. She moves from project to project and relationship to relationship with a restless energy that feels deeply authentic. Her devotion to her craft is admirable, even when it leaves chaos in its wake. As a creative person, I found much of her experience recognizable. The book's strongest moments aren't necessarily romantic. They're the moments where Frida is trying to build a life around work that is all-consuming and uncertain.

Kinsella also does an excellent job conveying the passage of time. Years slip by almost unnoticed. Careers evolve. Relationships change shape. People become different versions of themselves while somehow remaining exactly who they always were. By the end of the novel, you feel the weight of all those accumulated years.

My biggest reservation is John Reddan. I don't mind flawed characters. I don't mind selfish characters. In fact, some of my favorite literary characters are both. But for someone who occupies such a significant portion of the novel, John remains frustratingly flat. I often understood why he was drawn back to Frida, but I rarely understood why Frida continued returning to him. There simply wasn't enough on the page to explain his gravitational pull.

Perhaps that uncertainty is intentional. John himself often seems unsure of what he wants. Still, the novel asks readers to invest in a connection that spans years, and I never fully believed in his side of the equation.

Oddly enough, some of the supporting characters left a stronger impression. Their bad behavior, creative eccentricities, and professional chaos added texture to the world of the novel and often proved more memorable than John's internal struggles.

As I read, I kept returning to the same questions: Why do we stay? Why do we leave? Why do certain people linger in our lives long after the relationship itself has stopped making sense?

Frida Slattery as Herself doesn't offer neat answers. Instead, it explores the possibility that sometimes we hold onto people not because they are extraordinary, but because they have become attached to a particular chapter of our lives. Sometimes what we're mourning isn't the person. It's the version of ourselves that existed when we loved them.

This book feels like watching two people choose their work over each other again and again while never quite being able to let each other go. It's a thoughtful, bittersweet novel about ambition, nostalgia, and the complicated relationships that refuse to stay in the past.