Anne Enright

From Booker-prize winning author Anne Enright, an astonishing novel about the love between mother and daughter—sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent. "Carmel had been alone all her life. She had been alone since she was twelve years old. The baby knew all this. They looked at each other; one life into another life, and the baby knew exactly how alone her mother had been." Nell—funny, brave and so much loved—is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell's leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. And across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel's famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions. This is a meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A generational saga that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women in the face of promises false and true. Above all, it is an exploration of the love between mother and daughter - sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent.

A Novel

The Wren, The Wren

Helen 

The world has turned into the place where people get hurt, where the manI love will one day die. Everything speaks to me of his satety, his proximity – time is a mechanism to measure how long we are apart. It’s not that I think about him constantly, he is my way of thinking. His mind is my compass, his eyes my only mirror. Every night we roll down bamboo shutters against the forest and he does not enter my dreams or leave them, because we dream together. My body knows he is there. When we wake, we want the same thing. 

The Wren, The Wren quotes

Join the club