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Book Summary and Reviews of The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

The Wren, the Wren

A Novel

by Anne Enright

  • Critics' Consensus (7):
  • Readers' Rating (22):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2023, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

An incandescent novel from one of our greatest living novelists (The Times) about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at twenty-two Nell leaves her mother Carmel's orderly home to find her own voice as a writer (mostly online, ghost-blogging for an influencer) and to live a poetical life. As she chases obsessive love, damage, and transcendence, in Dublin and beyond, her grandfather's poetry seems to guide her home.

Nell's mother, Carmel McDaragh, knows the magic of her Daddo's poetry too well―the kind of magic that makes women in their nighties slip outside for a kiss and then elope, as her mother Terry had done. In his poems to Carmel, Phil envisions his daughter as a bright-eyed wren ascending in escape from his hand. But it is Phil who departs, abandoning his wife and two young daughters. Carmel struggles to reconcile "the poet" with the father whose desertion scars her life, along with that of her fiercely dutiful sister and their gentle, cancer-ridden mother. To distance herself from this betrayal, Carmel turns inward, raising Nell, her daughter, and one trusted love, alone.

the wren, the wren brings to life three generations of McDaragh women who must contend with inheritances―of poetic wonder and of abandonment by a man who is lauded in public and carelessly selfish at home. Their other, stronger inheritance is a sustaining love that is "more than 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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The exceptional, multigarlanded Irish writer returns with a three-generation, woman-centered family portrait marked by "inheritance, of both trauma and of wonder," and melodious, poetic echoes. Lyrical poems of birds punctuate the text, as do snatches of cruelty and violence between men and women, sisters, men and animals, even parents and children. But the familial connections are indelible and enduring. Tender and truthful as ever, Enright offers a beguiling journey to selfhood." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Enright imbues a sense of great importance to domestic incidents, such as in a flashback to Nell as a child, when Carmel strikes her after she acts out by breaking a light fixture, but the tone is far from despondent; the prose fizzes with wit and bite. Enright's discomfiting and glimmering narrative leans toward a poetic sense of hope." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Enriched by searing if beautiful poetry, Enright's beseeching novel thrums with desire, heartache, and connection." —Booklist (starred review)

"These pages practically crackle with intelligence, compassion, and wit. Phil McDaragh is so real I almost googled him. the wren, the wren might just be Anne Enright's best yet." —Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses

"Sharp, sudden, mischievous, sublime—this is dazzling novel; a glorious multi-generational novel of tangled relationships, secret, bodies, sex. Nell must be one of the best young women I've read in recent Irish fiction." —Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days

"the wren, the wren is a magnificent novel. Anne Enright's stylistic brilliance seems to put the reader directly in touch with her characters and the rich territory of their lives." —Sally Rooney, author of Beautiful World, Where Are You

This information about The Wren, the Wren was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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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.

...16 more reader reviews

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Author Information

Anne Enright Author Biography

Photo: Hugo Chaloner

Anne Enright is author of seven novels, most recently Actress. She has been awarded the Man Booker Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. She lives in Dublin.

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