Lola Kirke, the actress and country music singer, may be best known to Irish audiences for her performance as Hailey in the Amazon TV show Mozart in the Jungle. Daughter of Simon Kirke, the drummer in Bad Company and Free, and sister of Jemima, star of Girls and, more recently, Conversations with Friends and Sex Education, Lola’s family relocated from London when she was little and subsequently embraced a life of dysfunctional glamour in a West Village brownstone in New York City.
Now, Kirke has written a memoir in essays to reflect on the unconventional upbringing that taught her that “a certain kind of beauty and success would win us love”. Her bohemian childhood home offered a revolving door for rock stars, movie stars and artists. As a teenager Kirke interviewed her friend Bea’s “old aunt” for a school project, only to discover years later that the frail lady was the writer Joan Didion.
Kirke suggests she is neither famous nor old enough to justify a celebrity memoir, but her life of ongoing existential crises as someone celebrity adjacent has certainly proved fertile ground to excavate. She describes the book as “not exactly a memoir but a collection of personal essay-type stories about family dynamics – [hers] specifically – and also about womanhood, Hollywood, country music, class and, of course, New York City”.
In reality, the essays are predominantly about her family: her father’s infidelities, her sister’s cruelties, her complicated relationship with her mother. The other rich themes she alludes to, those that had the potential to elevate the anecdotes to a more insightful commentary on the cultural and societal context for her experiences, are slight.
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The reflections on her professional life – as an actor or emerging country music star – are viewed mostly through the lens of how they impacted upon her sense of self as the youngest Kirke. In truth, that is her point but, nonetheless, the essays often read as if the truly exciting texture of her life is just out of focus.
Kirke is self-aware enough to acknowledge the privilege of her wealth, her connections and having the freedom to pursue a life of precarity in the arts without any true jeopardy. The retrospection just scratches the surface, however, with Kirke occupied mostly by an attempt to unravel her own sense of alienation in her family and what it took to finally step out of the shadows and into her own identity. That need to find your own voice within a family is a universal coming-of-age dilemma that many will identify with, even if her lifestyle of decadence and limitless opportunity is otherworldly.
Ultimately Kirke is an engaging writer, and excellent company, but despite the frank and often darkly comedic accounts of her family’s antics there is a sense of her still pulling her punches. Joan Didion would probably suggest that she dig a little deeper.
