Anne Enright

I was impressed with [a:Anne Enright|52832|Anne Enright|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1693583104p2/52832.jpg]'s [b:The Wren, the Wren|77265006|The Wren, the Wren|Anne Enright|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679200316l/77265006._SX50_.jpg|100027862] about three generations in a Dublin family and their interactions interspersed by samples from the poet father. While there are some difficult moments in this story, and I don't recommend it to my sister who prefers happy tales, the writing is sheer joy.… (more)

I relished this book. In one way, it's a story in two halves - the earlier lives of four siblings and their mother: and then later, when this dispersed family returns for a family Christmas.

I loved the different voices in which this story is told. In part one, each chapter could stand as a self-contained novella. And each of the five characters is revealed not in a simple narrative, but through vignettes in which they may not even stand centre stage - the story of Dan is a particular triumph.

I loved the change of pace too. Those 'novellas' were rich explorations of five very different lives . But in the second part, the chapters become briefer, fractured, as the drama of unfolding events gathers pace.

We're left with a portrait of a disfunctional family unwittingly revealed with great clarity by the characters themselves.… (more)

I must admit there was something about this book that propelled me to complete it. Perhaps that something was Nell's restlessness and her search for romantic love and her grandfather, Phil, she only knows by his poetry.
The story is told from the perspectives of Nell and her mother, Carmel. Little by little Phil is revealed to reader and also to Nell.
We discover The Wren, The Wren was a poem penned by her deceased grandfather for her mother when she was just a child. We discover her grandfather believed in fairies and loved the Irish landscape. We discover another side to Phil, he deserted his first wife when she lost a breast to cancer and simultaneously his two young daughters then marries again.
I suppose this novel explores the means to which these women reconcile to the fact that Phil although a lover of nature and birds and fairies could also be a cold hearted sob.… (more)