The Wren, the Wren: Book summary and reviews of The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

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She Treads Softly

very highly recommended literary fiction
The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright is very highly recommended literary fiction following the legacy of trauma in an Irish family.

Celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh is the grandfather of Nell, father of Carmel, and was the husband of Terry. Each of them experiences the legacy of his poems differently. Nell was raised by her single mother, Carmel. She is a recent university graduate who never knew her grandfather, but his love poems speak to her. She's involved in a toxic relationship that she struggles to leave. Carmel is a hard, practical realist who knows the spells her father's poetry can spin, but also knows he abandoned his wife who had breast cancer and left his two daughters to care for her as he went off to charm women and had affairs. She is fiercely the mother to Nell while viewing her father realistically. She has heard how he charmed Terry and witnessed his later actions.

The novel is filled with lyrical poems featuring birds, but also very real episodes of cruelty and violence. There is a strong juxtaposition of the expressive beauty of the poetry with the realistic violence and betrayal. The narrative switches between the point-of-view of Nell, Carmel, and Phil. The complicated feeling Carmel feels for her father while also knowing the worse of his behavior illustrates the sharp contrasts between his poetry and behavior. Nell's entanglements also seem to mimic this same disparity.

Both Nell and Carmel are portrayed as realistic, fully realized characters, with flaws, struggles, and strengths. You will hope for the best for both of them and their relationship as daughter and mother while they deal with their issues and the complications from their family name.

What sets this literary family drama apart from other novels is the impeccable writing that soulfully captures the yearning, betrayal, and longing of the characters as they must each journey to their own conclusions. They have inherited the ties to Phil's poetic accomplishes, but must determine what inheritance this will mean for their lives. That Enright successfully tackles this quandary in the narrative and accomplishes this, seemingly with ease, is part of what made this an exceptional novel.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company via NetGalley.

Christine M. (Indianapolis, IN)

Our Fluttering Existence
Reading Anne Enright's "the wren, the wren" is like floating down a mad ,emotional river. Your jostled joints change course with rivets of fresh insight. Then overhead birds and poetry fly by with their complex songs. On page one, we are directed to how minds record their inner lives: with wordless questions, with florid images, with emotion-sensations. Her characters take note. " We don't walk down the same street as the person beside us."

What happens in this novel is not really important. The philosophical flow of humor and moving-on is. Enright's descriptions are doubled-pronged. Readers will shout affirmations knowingly at " red brick streets that started to look curated" and "addicted to the prick of tears- just on the eyeball's rind", and suitcase filled with "clapped out flip flops and badly chosen scarfs". Kitchen gadgets are " like bits of middle class aspirations." Enright's mind works miraculously with humor and pathos.

Kudos , also, to the title " the wren, the wren" in symbolic lower case, the arresting cover, and my favorite line: " There is more to life than being sensible." Enright's is a joy.

Donna C. )Shell Beach CA)

Three generations of women and their poet - an enticing serpentine novel
The Wren, The Wren is a captivating and beautifully written, but strenuous, book to read, with its non-linear format and frequent use of no conversational quotation marks. The opening of the book drew me in, a psychology expert's study on the ways people think, and the book followed that fascinating beginning with every character. Told through the perspectives of three generations of women, the wife, daughter and granddaughter of an Irish poet who left his family, each offers slices of the chapters of her life with many references to both wild birds and their songs. Snuggled in between those is a small section narrated by the poet himself, the man whose influence has greatly affected them all, and snatches here and there of old Irish poetry, some of which is his. I love Enright's use of language throughout. One of my favorite lines was given to the granddaughter: "A year out of college, I was poking my snout and whiskers into fresh adult air…" Truly a book worth reading!

Shirley T. (Comfort, TX)

The Wren, the Wren
The Wren, the Wren ---how to describe this brilliant novel of a family who inherit both love and disturbing emotions?

The three women, Grandmother Terry, her daughter Carmel, who is Nells mother and Nell drive each other crazy but whose love for each other is the sustaining thread through the story.

Carmel, Nell's mother, has a very different view of life from her daughter. Nell longs to escape and see the world and write about it. Through the years, the novel is interspersed with the love poetry of the Grandfather who sees Nell as a little wren, and who remembers the past verses of old Ireland, both of sorrow and love.

Birds and birdsong move through the narrative with special meaning for each of the women. This magical story supports the passage of time from the old poet to the modern world of Nell McDaragh, making it a very special novel.

Julia Emmons

Intricate,Skillful Novel By Booker Prize Winner
The seventh novel by noted Irish writer, Anne Enright, whose novel, The Gathering, won the Man Booker Prize (2007) is no beach read, The Wren, The Wren merits close attention from demanding readers who will savor her understated poetic novel as she explores the complex intricacies and challenges which engulfed three generations of a contemporary Irish family when its charismatic patriarch walked out the door.

Toby Jill Galinkin

A Poetic Novel
The Wren, The Wren is a poetical saga about three women and the husband, father and grandfather who shaped their lives. This was beautifully written as Enright is an incredibly gifted author. I found the style to be a little unique as it is non-linear in the course of events taking place in the lives of the women. This is not a book to be read lightly; it requires some concentration and is more definitely NOT chick lit but literature.

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