The Wren, The Wren – Anne Enright

This was my next random selection from my TBR (number 66). I read The Gathering (I don’t seem to have blogged about it). I wasn’t 100% sure about this one, but it was nominated for the Women’s Fiction prize, which I like, so I thought I would give it a go (I think it was a Kobo deal).

Here’s the blurb …

An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

Nell 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 Nell 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 contend with inheritances—of abandonment and of 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.

We have multiple view points (even a tiny bit of Phil) and different time periods. We watch the women (Nell and Carmel) navigate life, love and trauma. The characters are fully formed and leap of the page – I found Nell to be quite annoying. There is also snippets of ‘Phil’s’ poetry

There is domestic violence and poor decisions, but ultimately feels positive.

A review