Louise O’Neill has straddled the spheres of social awareness and entertainment in her books, writing glamorous thrillers that tackle issues – many pertaining to young women – such as body image, toxic relationships and fame. When the television role that teenage actress Madeline Stone covets goes to her twin sister Chelsea, Madeline spirals into substance abuse and bulimia, then disappears, presumed dead. With its dirty secrets, stage-mother from hell, and nod to the campy movie-classic starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Whatever Happened to Madeline Stone? is a Tinseltown novel as gleefully tawdry as its title suggests.
The novel alternates between 2003, when Madeline vanishes, and 2025. At 39, Chelsea, who has had a TV hit show and Oscar nomination, is still controlled by the people she loves, especially her mother Erin, “still the kind of beautiful that would cause heads to turn”, a blonde-haired narcissist who poisons her daughters with her ambitions, monitoring their weight, fanning their rivalry, and even capitalising on Madeline’s disappearance with a podcast.
The prose, while lacking in ambiguity (“That was Erni’s love language, after all, attention.”) gets the job done, as does the dialogue (“That man was manipulating you and you fell for it.”) which balances exposition with melodrama. The novel’s LA might feel a little stereotyped, brimming with internet billionaires, Goop salads and Harry Winston bling, but it’s craveable nonetheless.
Here, the “most powerful producer in Hollywood” with lascivious tendencies is called Jeffrey instead of Harvey. Madeleine and Chelsea may remind us of the twin actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. There are also many echoes of Jennette McCurdy’s 2022 memoir of being a TV child star, I’m Glad My Mom Died, an unforgettably lacerating portrait of a mother-daughter relationship shaped by an industry.
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The writer Agatha Christie was criticised for basing her Hollywood mystery The Mirror Crack’d on tragic circumstances involving the actress Gene Tierney, who was still alive at the time. Perhaps it helps explain why O’Neill, whose past novels have demonstrated a capacity to genuinely disturb, has opted to write something more superficially entertaining.
[ Louise O’Neill: ‘My career took off. My life changed. And I fell apart’Opens in new window ]
Although O’Neill’s fiction often uses real-life events as a catalyst, the inspiration behind Madeline Stone is raw and recent; wisely, she does not exploit it. Instead she has written a nostalgic noir that, in being pulpy and slightly silly, is respectful of its source. Madeline Stone might make us question the brightly affirmative facade of media culture, but it remains, despite its dark undercurrents, a deliberately escapist read.
Mei Chin is a writer from New York City living in Dublin.
