Anne Enright: The Wren

The latest addition to my website is Anne Enright‘s The Wren. This novel tells off three generations, an irresponsible but apparently great Irish poet, his wife, their daughters and granddaughter. Phil, the poet, will abandon his wife, Terry, when she gets breast cancer and, as he goes to the US, essentially abandons his daughters, though he will write a poem called The Wren dedicated to his youngest daughter, Carmel. The two daughters do not do well in romance. Carmel has a daughter, Nell, from a fling with a man she never sees again, abortion, of course, being illegal in Ireland at that time, and the two sisters will later become carers rather than lovers of their men. Nell is of the Internet generation and tries to make her living writing Internet articles and spends her time watching Internet videos, while her subsequently violent boyfriend watches porn and follows football. She will eventually travel to try and find herself but ends up something of a lost soul, like her mother and aunt. It is something of a sad book but whether the women are cursed by the connection to the wayward Irish poet or just natural lost souls is left to the reader to decide.

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