The Wren, The Wren

 

The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright is the second  inter-generational Irish novel I’ve read this year. The thread that ties three generations of women together is a drunken philandering poet, Phil McDaragh, who is the pride of his countrymen and adored  internationally. He abandoned his dying wife, who had been his muse, and his two young daughters, Imelda and Carmel, to seek fame and fortune in America. This desertion happened long before Carmel’s daughter, Nell, was born but has had a negative impact on her as well. Phil is dead but his legacy of emotional traumatization lives on. The story is told from the perspectives of Carmel and Nell with a brief, self-serving interjection from Phil. 

Carmel and Nell have a complicated relationship and their relationships with others are just as fraught. Carmel is a single parent by choice, to avoid her own mother’s fate. Carmel does not know how to express her deep love for her daughter and Nell becomes enmeshed in a masochistic relationship which only ends when the abuser abandons her. But in the end Nell appears to be on her way to escaping the chains of her history.

With this new novel Anne Enright cements her reputation as one of the great living writers.