nomadreader

The backstory: I've previously read and enjoyed Anne Enright's fiction ( my review of The Forgotten Waltz ) and nonfiction ( my review of Making Babies .) Update: The Green Road  has been longlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize . Update: It has also been longlisted for the 2016 Baileys Prize . The basics: The Green Road is the story of Rosaleen Madigan and her children. It begins in 1980 with the shock of Dan declaring he's becoming a priest. We spend time with each of the four Madigan children (plus Rosaleen) in different cities (and countries) in a different year before they each come home for a holiday. My thoughts: In some ways, the first five parts of The Green Road  would work as stand-alone short stories. There are some references to the family, but Enright lets us get to know each character individually. Oddly, my least favorite section was Hanna's, which comes first, and Hanna is the character I felt like I knew the least about in the first half of the book....

The basics: Making Babies  is Anne Enright's memoir of becoming a mother and the first two years of her two childrens' lives. Enright and her husband were together for 18 years before having children relatively late in life. My thoughts: I remember wanting to read this when it first came out, but I put it in my virtual "wait until I'm pregnant" pile. When it arrived in the mail a few days after telling one of my best friends I was pregnant, I was ecstatic, and I knew it was exactly what I needed at that moment. As excited as I was to finally  be pregnant, I was also somewhat ambivalent about it. I was nervous about all the changes pregnancy would bring, and Enright's words were reassuring in the best ways. She beautifully captures the joys, annoyances, and ambivalent moments of pregnancy and motherhood. Enright's irreverence, wisdom and humor shine through this memoir: "Humans give birth in pain so that they can’t run away afterward." Alth...

The backstory: The Forgotten Waltz  is on the 2012 Orange Prize longlist. It also won the 2012 Carnegie Medal . The basics: Gina recounts both how she fell in love with her ex-husband and how she came to cheat on him with her current husband. My thoughts: This novel was my first experience with Anne Enright, and her writing enraptured me from the beginning. She has a way with observational detail I adored: "I end up talking to a woman who is sitting beside a plate of chocolate Rice Krispie cakes and working her way through them in a forgetful sort of way. They have mini-marshmallows on top. She goes to pop one in her mouth, then she pulls back in surprise. 'Ooh, pink!' she says." In such an observational novel, it's difficult to separate Enright's writing from Gina's observation, and I loved both. For the first half of this novel, I was utterly enthralled and bemoaned never having read Enright before. As the novel progressed, however, my adoratio...