Birdsong

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1877) opens with the famous line 'happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way'.  I thought of this line as I read Anne Enright's The Wren, The Wren (2023), the story of a family and the ways in which complex relationships have intergenerational impacts.   

Nell McDaragh is the grand-daughter of a famous Irish poet, Phil McDaragh, whom she never knew. At age 22 she leaves home to become a writer for a travel blog and starts a relationship with a controlling man who is not the loving boyfriend she seeks. 

Nell's relationship with her mother, Carmel, is fraught and layered with intergenerational trauma. The mother-daughter pair love each other fiercely, but often in unhealthy ways. Carmel has difficulty connecting with people, having been abandoned by her father Phil, who left his terminally ill wife and young family. She also struggles to reconcile a man who writes such beautiful verse with his personal behaviour. One such verse, 'the wren, the wren' he wrote for Carmel, and she holds on to this as proof of his love.

Carmel awaits a visit from Nell and watches an old video of her father being interviewed. With his Irish charm, Phil recounts that his wife 'got sick, unfortunately, and the marriage did not survive'. Carmel fumes as the reason for the marriage failure was her father's wandering eye and his inability to take responsibility for his own actions. Phil died years ago, but his shadow looms large. Carmel's sister Imelda sees him quite differently, forging a wedge between the women.

Enright tells the story in alternating narratives between Carmel and Nell, with Phil's poems scattered throughout the novel. As I read, I listened to the audiobook version where Enright performed Carmel to perfection. I also enjoyed Owen Roe's Phil and Aoife Duffin voicing Nell. I had the pleasure of seeing Enright at the All About Women festival last month, where she read passages from the book, and signed a copy of the book for me. 

Enright's prose is magnificent. She infuses darkness with humour, and creates realistic, fallible humans. Birds recur throughout the novel, as Nell recalls their song, and travels to Australia and New Zealand where she wonders at the exotic birds. Nature is also a theme of many of Phil's poems. The inclusion of this verse was a brilliant way to contrast Phil's outward appearance with the reality of those who knew him.

I absolutely loved The Wren, The Wren - an early contender for my favourite read of 2024. Absolutely brilliant!

The Wren, the Wren has been longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction.  Enright is the author of seven novels including the Booker Prize winning The Gathering (2007) and The Green Road (2016) which was previously shortlisted for the Women's Prize. I really must read more of her novels!