The Wren, The Wren
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024
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3.0 • 8 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
WINNER OF THE WRITERS’ PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
Carmel had been alone all her life. The baby knew this. They looked at each other, and all of time was there. The baby knew how vast her mother's loneliness had been.
‘A magnificent novel’ SALLY ROONEY
Nell is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell’s leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. Over them both falls the long shadow of Carmel’s famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions.
From our greatest chronicler of family life, The Wren, The Wren is a story of the love that can unite us, and the individual acts that threaten this vital bond.
‘A triumph…treasure it’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘One of the great living writers on the subject of family’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘A must-read’ MARGARET ATWOOD (on Twitter)
‘Might just be Anne Enright’s best yet’ LOUISE KENNEDY
*A SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, GUARDIAN, TLS, HARPER’S BAZAAR, NEW STATESMAN, THE NEW YORKER, TIME AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The whip-smart latest from Booker winner Enright (The Gathering) explores the complex legacy of a revered Irish poet. It begins in contemporary Dublin with late poet Phil McDaragh's granddaughter Nell, a recent university graduate who falls for and remains attached to a man despite suspecting he's being unfaithful and feeling underwhelmed by the sex ("not even bad in a good way"). Enright contrasts Nell's defiant and free-spirited narration with that of Carmel, Nell's caring and practical mother, who ponders her daughter's future and the pain of Phil's abandonment of her mother, Terry, when she was battling breast cancer. Phil's legacy is present within the novel in two forms: his poems, resplendent with images of birds and bucolic lyricism, which Enright presents in their entirety; and his troubling personal life, both as an absentee father and a toxic partner to various women (a former lover and fellow poet's relationship with him is characterized on a Wikipedia page as "abusive"). Enright imbues a sense of great importance to domestic incidents, such as in a flashback to Nell as a child, when Carmel strikes her after she acts out by breaking a light fixture, but the tone is far from despondent; the prose fizzes with wit and bite. Enright's discomfiting and glimmering narrative leans toward a poetic sense of hope.
Customer Reviews
I still don’t get what all the fuss is about
The author is Irish, has published three volumes of short stories, one book of nonfiction, five novels, and received numerous awards and prizes including the Booker for ‘The Gathering’ (2007).
Phil McDaragh is a famous Irish poet and serial philanderer. The book centres on Carmel, his long suffering daughter, and her daughters, Nell and Imelda, Nell in particular. Carmel has a new bloke, who is not a poet but resembles Phil in other ways. Nell has never met her grandfather, but is much taken with his poetry and wants to be a writer herself.
The narrative unfolds in alternating POVs from Carmel and Nell, although Phil gets one chapter of his own. None of the characters appealed to me, and there’s not much in the way of plot to be going on with. There’s a fair bit of poetry though, both on the page, and analysis of. Bird metaphors are prominent, as may be guessed from the title. A dog and a badger get into it at one stage too.
Ms E is a fine writer; everyone says so. It’s my fault that I still don’t understand why.