Review of THE WREN, THE WREN by Anne Enright (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

I read this book while travelling so perhaps was not able to give it the attention it needs, but I had difficulty remaining engaged. 

The novel focuses on two women, Carmel and her daughter Nell, but Phil McDaragh, Carmel’s father, looms large.  Phil deserted his wife Terry when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, leaving her in the care of their two daughters, Imelda aged 17 and Carmel, 12.  A philanderer and wanderer, he focused on writing poetry and became “the finest love poet of his generation.”  The novel examines the emotional and psychological effect his rejection has on his youngest daughter and his granddaughter. 

Carmel becomes a very pragmatic person.  Because of her father’s behaviour, she is cautious around men.  She does not really want a man in her life; being a single mother is just fine for her.  She focuses on her career as a teacher and on her daughter, becoming rather possessive about Nell.  Carmel does have a relationship with a man whom she repeatedly describes as nice, but when he has a health crisis, she abandons him. 

Nell is much more of a free spirit who wants to escape her mother’s possessiveness.  She yearns to travel and write.  Perhaps her being fatherless has affected her ability to form a healthy relationship with a man.  One relationship is with a man who can only be described as abusive; his behaviour is not unlike Phil’s.  Nell yearns to travel and write and turns to her grandfather’s poetry for comfort, even getting a tattoo of a line from one of his poems. 

Chapters alternate between the two women.  Carmel’s sections are in third person, but Nell’s are in first person, often in a stream-of-consciousness style.  Interspersed are some poems written by Phil and some of his translations of old Irish poetry.  Phil also has a chapter, a childhood memoir which does explain to some extent how his upbringing influenced his adulthood. 

Unfortunately, I did not like any of the characters.  I found Carmel dull and Nell tedious.  Imelda is a bully.  And Phil, of course, is a cad.  His explanation for desertion reveals a pathological selfishness:  “’She got sick, unfortunately, and the marriage did not survive.’”  Men in general do not fare well.  There’s Felim, an abuser, and Ronan and David are nice but bland. 

Obviously, the novel is about generational trauma.  There is no doubt that both Carmel and Nell, and Imelda too, are haunted by Phil’s treachery.  Their relationships with each other and with men in general suffer because of his abandonment and abuse, and to some extent, they repeat the cycle.  The women realize that they cannot escape the past; watching an old video interview with her grandfather, Nell sees “my aunt Imelda’s wry, sour little aside.  Carmel’s hunchy way of sitting forward, the same emphatic finger.  He has my quick twist of a smirk at the end of a sentence . . . The McDaraghs are all jumbled up inside him.”  She concludes, “The connection between us is more than a strand of DNA, it is a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.”

As I mentioned at the beginning, I was not able to give the book a great deal of attention so perhaps that is why I found it fractured and fragmented, ambiguous and vague.  Despite its gorgeous language, it often felt like a series of disjointed vignettes so I was sometimes frustrated and confused. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.