return to home  
Join   |  Gift   |  Member Login   |  Library Login
BookBrowse Mobile
Follow Us: 
   Book Excerpt

Read free book excerpt from The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright, plus multiple reviews, author biography & more

The Forgotten Waltz

The Forgotten Waltz
by Anne Enright
Hardcover: Oct 2011,
272 pages.
Paperback: Apr 2012,
272 pages.

Publication information
Author Information
Critics' Opinion:   
Readers' Rating:    Not Yet Rated
About BookBrowse Rankings
Share: 
Buy This Book

Excerpt of The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
(Page 1 of 3)

 Printer Friendly Excerpt

I met him in my sister's garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first. There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the late summer light and the view. I put him at the bottom of my sister's garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn. Half five maybe. It is half past five on a Wicklow summer Sunday when I see Seán for the first time. There he is, where the end of my sister's garden becomes uncertain. He is about to turn around - but he doesn't know this yet. He is looking at the view and I am looking at him. The sun is low and lovely. He is standing where the hillside begins its slow run down to the coast, and the light is at his back, and it is just that time of day when all the colours come into their own.
 
It is some years ago now. The house is new and this is my sister's housewarming party, or first party, a few months after they moved in. The first thing they did was take down the wooden fence, to get their glimpse of the sea, so the back of the house sits like a missing tooth in the row of new homes, exposed to the easterly winds and to curious cows; a little stage set, for this afternoon, of happiness.
 
 
They have new neighbours in, and old pals, and me, with a few cases of wine and the barbecue they put on their wedding list but ended up buying themselves. It sits on the patio, a green thing with a swivelling bucket of a lid, and my brother-in-law Shay - I think he even wore the apron - waves wooden tongs over lamb steaks and chicken drumsticks, while cracking cans of beer, high in the air, with his free hand.
 
Fiona keeps expecting me to help because I am her sister. She passes with an armful of plates and shoots me a dark look. Then she remembers that I am a guest and offers me some Chardonnay.
 
'Yes,' I say. 'Yes, I'd love some, thanks,' and we chat like grown-ups. The glass she fills me is the size of a swimming pool.
 
It makes me want to cry to think of it. It must have been 2002. There I was, just back from three weeks in Australia and mad - just mad - into Chardonnay. My niece Megan must have been four, my nephew nearly two: fantastic, messy little items, who look at me like they are waiting for the joke. They have friends in, too. It's hard to tell how many kids there are, running around the place - I think they are being cloned in the downstairs bathroom. A woman goes in there with one toddler and she always comes out fussing over two.
 
I sit beside the glass wall between the kitchen and garden - it really is a lovely house - and I watch my sister's life. The mothers hover round the table where the kids' food is set, while, out in the open air, the men sip their drinks and glance skywards, as though for rain. I end up talking to a woman who is sitting beside a plate of chocolate Rice Krispie cakes and working her way through them in a forgetful sort of way. They have mini-marshmallows on top. She goes to pop one in her mouth, then she pulls back in surprise.
 
 'Ooh, pink!' she says.
 
I don't know what I was waiting for. My boyfriend, Conor, must have been dropping someone off or picking them up - I can't remember why he wasn't back. He would have been driving. He usually drove, so I could have a few drinks. Which was one of the good things about Conor, I have to say. These days, it's me who drives. Though that is an improvement, too.
 
And I don't know why I remember the chocolate Rice Krispies, except that 'Ooh, pink!' seemed like the funniest thing I had ever heard, and we ended up weak with laughter, myself and this nameless neighbour of my sister's - she, in particular, so crippled by mirth you couldn't tell if it was appendicitis or hilarity had her bent over. In the middle of which, she seemed to keel off her chair a little. She rolled to the side, while I just kept looking at her and laughing. Then she hit the ground running and began a low charge, out through the glass door and towards my brother-in-law.

1 2 3  »

Reprinted from The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright © 2011 by Anne Enright. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


Become a Member
The Expats by Chris Pavone
Editor's Choice
  •  Jun 17 
  •  Jun 15 
  •  Jun 13 
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah Jacket

Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Karen Joy Fowler

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Jacket

The story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel.
TransAtlantic
Colum McCann

TransAtlantic Jacket

The most mature work yet from an incomparable storyteller, TransAtlantic is a profound meditation on identity and history in a wide world that grows somehow smaller and more wondrous with...
Click Here
   Most Recent Blog Entries
Top Ten Guidelines For How to Behave in a Book Club
Movies Based on Books: Summer 2013 (May - August)
Jewish Themed Young Adult Books, Not About The Holocaust
rss  RSS   rss  subscribe
Recent Reader Reviews
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
From the first page, I was drawn in by the lyrical writing of the author and mesmerized as the narrator, eight year old Raami, remembered the years... read more
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
Trite but true, all good things must come to an end. I so wanted to keep reading the wonderful prose, the settings that let one think they are part... read more
The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag
A magical book, an enchanted house, a cast of characters who previously lived there but remain on the walls in photographs to be talked to whenever... read more
RSS RSS feed More...  
Most Viewed This Week
1. Little Princes
Conor Grennan
2. Ava's Man
Rick Bragg
3. Half the Sky
Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn
4. K Blows Top
Peter Carlson
5. The Special Prisoner
Jim Lehrer
More...
Book Club Recommendations
A Monster Calls
by Siobhan Dowd, Patrick Ness
Paperback (Mar/13)
The End of the Point
by Elizabeth Graver
Paperback (Feb/14)
Out of The Easy
by Ruta Sepetys
Paperback (Feb/14)
Maggot Moon
by Sally Gardner
Hardback (Feb/13)
More...
First Impressions
Members read and review books often months before they're published. See what they think in First Impressions!
Children of the Jacaranda Tree
by Sahar Delijani
4.5 Stars            (Jun/13)
Crime of Privilege
by Walter Walker
Four Stars            (Jun/13)
Her Last Breath
by Linda Castillo
4.5 Stars            (Jun/13)
More...
  Latest BookBrowse News
Kenn Nesbitt is new Children's Poet Laureate (Jun 12 2013)
Kenn Nesbitt has been named the new Children's Poet Laureate: Consultant in Children's Poetry to the Poetry Foundation, which noted that the two-year position... Full Story
rss RSS feed More...
 
BookBrowse Poll
Q: Which of these Summer movies based on books would you like to see? (Info on each movie here)
The Great Gatsby
Epic
Man of Steel
World War Z
The Lone Ranger
The Wolverine
R.I.P.D.
Percy Jackson
Paranoia
The Mortal Instruments
Select Any That Apply
Search: Title or Author
Free Newsletters

Online Book Club
More about
The Execution of Noa P. Singleton
Join the discussion!


Win This Book!
The Execution of Noa P. Singleton


"An intense and gripping novel of betrayal & guilt."
- Ayelet Waldman


Enter To Win Now!

wordplay
Solve this clue:
"I G I O Ear A O T O"

and be entered
to win....
frame top
New Author
Interviews
Carol Rifka Brunt
Kent Wascom
Jennifer McVeigh
Elizabeth Becker
frame bottom
HOME Book Submissions | Advertising | Library Subscriptions | Reviewing for BookBrowse | Contact Us