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Want to know if you should read The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright? Read my full review to help you decide!
An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder and love across three generations of women.
Neil McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, full of verve and wit, twenty-two-year-old Neil leaves her mother Carmel’s home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry - and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet” with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother.
The Wren, The Wren, brings to life three generations of women who content with inheritances - of abandonment and of sustaining love that is “more of a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.” In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.
SUMMARY: THE WREN, HE WREN
REVIEW: THE WREN, THE WREN
The Wren, The Wren is Anne Enright’s latest book. It was published September 2023. She is an Irish author, the first Laureate for Irish Fiction and winner of the Man Booker Prize. She has published several novels, several short stories and a nonfiction book.
The Wren, The Wren is my first experience with Ms. Enright’s literary works. I was attracted to the book because of Neil’s pull to her grandfather’s work. I was really close to both of my grandfathers and the exploration of a grandfather’s legacy on his granddaughter was a subject that I found interesting.
The writing style of this book is different than what I usually read. It was very poetic, but I felt some of the substance of the book…the substance of the story was lost in the poeticism. It was a slow burn for me. It took a while for me to really get into it, and it took a while for me to connect to the characters. But once I did, I was eager to follow their journeys and finish the book. The characters are well developed. You definitely get a strong sense of who they are and why they are that way. There is a lot of tension and love between the characters, and I think The Wren, The Wren is an honest exploration of familial relationships and dynamics.
The Wren, The Wren was not my favorite book. I enjoyed reading it. I enjoyed the experience of reading it, and I feel more cultured and well-read because of it. I’m a fan of new experiences, so I would recommend the book, but I want you to know it is a different read.