“The Wren, The Wren” by Anne Enright

Anne Enright once again entertains her readership with her new novel. The story of mother, Carmel and her daughter Nell; their lives unfold – the ups and downs of single parenthood. Carmel’s memories of her late father, Phil McDaragh a famous Irish poet who deserted her mother and siblings and eventually ended up in the States. His is the other voice we hear and his poetry filters through the pages of “The Wren, The Wren” which is a poem he wrote and dedicated to Carmel. A loving but absent father.

Anne Enright has a talent for depicting characters and inter-family relationships; she again excels here.

The focus of the book is on Nell’s life, her childhood experiences and teenage life as she matures and leaves the safe confines of her home and ventures into the wider world. She writes, but nothing of any literary worth just articles for websites, no rivalry to her grandfather’s poems. She has a relationship with rugby player, Felim, a farmer’s son who shows her no respect but for a while she remains besotted with him and in his awe. Her life does move on, she goes abroad retracing some of her grandfather’s footsteps in Italy before venturing further afield.

Carmel is left with her reflections on her earlier life before and after her father’s departure. She has a rather distant relationship with her elder sister, Imelda, who had remained living at home, helping care for their mother, Terry, she then inherited the family house. Carmel had already left and established her own space and territory; though she would head back, after work, to help care for her book-loving mother. Life was never fair.

The book portrays mother and daughter’s lives, the pages sectioned to their individual outlooks, the prose changing between their two memories, Nell’s modern and sharp softens later; Carmel’s gentler, mellowed with age. Poet father, Phil, also adds some variation to the tone of the book which depicts Ireland through the decades more as a setting than anything else. The McDaragh family provide a fulfilling read as any fan of Anne Enright would expect. She chronicles families and their relationships as though it is a territory, within fiction, she has reserved for herself.