The Book Nook Chronicles

I’m officially 19 books into my goal of 23 books in 2023! Check out my Instagram-exclusive review of Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle posted earlier this month on my Bookstagram. If you want even more bookish content, give it a follow!

The Wren, the Wren is not a book I had on my 2023 TBR. It’s not even a book I knew existed until October of this year. However, while in Dublin for a quick 48-hour stay after my husband and I completed a trip to Germany with some friends, I convinced him to pop into a bookstore on Grafton Street. While inside, he handed me a signed copy of The Wren, the Wren, and said, “This feels like something you need. Buy it.” The man knows me better than I know myself, so I caved a bought the book (obviously).

Set in the bustling city of Dublin, The Wren, the Wren is a story filled with generational angst and the complex love between a mother and her daughter. The setting itself made it easy for me to fall into this book and Anne Enright’s conversational and quick-witted writing style is that of many iconic contemporary Irish writers of today. Primarily focused around Carmel McDaragh and her relationships with her father/ prolific poet, Phil, and her daughter/freelance writer, Nell, the book will have you contemplating the humanity and flaws we often overlook in our parents and our children.

For example, Nell–a woman in her late 20s still trying to figure out her path in life–sees Carmel as dull and overbearing (as many 20-somethings do) but finds the grandfather she never had the chance to meet fascinating and relatable. As you learn more about Carmel and her father’s abandonment when she was a child, this story quickly transforms from a typical tense tale between a mother and daughter into a lesson on how parents are often icebergs–only showing the parts of themselves that their kids need to see.

While Phil McDaragh is clearly the cause of most (if not all) of the family trauma within this book, his character is the least developed. It’s a beautiful way to demonstrate how someone can be the cause of so much turmoil even after they are gone. His handcrafted poems throughout this text are lovely, and give you a taste of the playboy poet he was. Enright enlisted the help of some of her actual poet friends to make these fictitious pieces feel as if they have existed within our literary lexicon for decades. My personal favorite was, ironically, also one of Nell’s favorites called “River Talk.” Before realizing what a shithead her late grandfather truly was, Nell gets the line, “Love is a tide” from this very poem tattooed on her collarbone. My favorite stanza includes it,

Love is a tide, it is mist
Becoming cloud, it is rain
On the river, water into water
Heart into heart. It is all
Downhill from here.

Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren. pg. 171. Stanza 3, lines 14-18.

While I was captivated by Enright’s overall story, I did find the layout of this novel a bit difficult to read. Page breaks and chapters are my best friends while I’m reading due to my ability to get easily distracted. This book however is broken into dual POVs, jumping predominately between Carmel and Nell (with a single portion written from Phil’s perspective). Enright artfully adjusts her voice for each character. Carmel’s sections were more matter-of-fact and orderly, while Nell’s contained more whimsy and angst. I often got a little distracted during Nell’s sections because of her character’s scatterbrained conscience. If you like the organizational benefits of chapters like me, you may find the structure of this book a little hard to get into. The sections do get shorter as the book goes along which helps immensely.

This book is fantastic for a mother and daughter to read together. It may even have the power to bring generations of women who do not always see eye-to-eye closer. This story touches on hard topics like having children out of wedlock, estranged parents, and abusive partners. It’s tactful and stormy. It’s charming and moody. It’s 21st-century Irish literature through and through.

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Erica’s Experience

Title: The Wren, the Wren

Author: Anne Enright

Genre: Current Fiction

Page Count: 273

Publication Date: August 23, 2023