Research Catalog

Title

The wren, the wren : a novel / Anne Enright.

Author

Enright, Anne, 1962-

Publication

• New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, 2023.
• ©2023

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

278 pages; 22 cm

Summary

"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 knife-sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope." --

Subject

• Families > Fiction
• Interpersonal relations > Fiction
• Mothers and daughters > Fiction
• Fathers and daughters > Fiction
• Psychic trauma > Fiction
• Generational trauma > Fiction
• Young women > Fiction
• Families
• Fathers and daughters
• Generational trauma
• Interpersonal relations
• Mothers and daughters
• Psychic trauma
• Young women
• Family members

Genre/Form

• Domestic fiction.
• Fiction.
• Novels.
• Psychological fiction.

Note

• "First published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape in 2023"--Title page verso.

Call Number

JFD 23-1894

ISBN

• 9781324005681
• 1324005688

OCLC

1362865927

Author

Enright, Anne, 1962- author.

Title

The wren, the wren : a novel / Anne Enright.

Publisher

New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, 2023.

Copyright Date

©2023

Edition

First American edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Research Call Number

JFD 23-1894