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ClareR (6129 KP) rated The Wren, The Wren in Books

Jul 20, 2024  
The Wren, The Wren
The Wren, The Wren
Anne Enright | 2023 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This is a beautiful story of 3 generations of women, all affected by the same man: poet Phil McDaragh. They have very different relationships with him. Carmel is his daughter and when he leaves the family, it’s up to Carmel and her sister to care for their mother with terminal cancer. Carmel loves her father, but is conflicted with their abandonment And how what he writes in his poems is at odds with the way he treated them.

Carmel’s daughter Nell, a Trinity College graduate, discovers just how difficult life is without her mothers help when she strikes out on her own. She meets a man who is abusive towards her.

This is a story that highlights multi-generational family trauma, and probably why both Carmel and Nell have such poor relationships with men. Running alongside this, is the love these women have for one another.

I get that not everyone will like this novel, but I’ve read two of Enright’s novels now and really enjoyed both of them. I read this as a part of the Women’s Prize shortlist, and whilst I realise they can’t all win, The Wren, The Wren really did deserve to be on that list.
Recommended.
  
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Whatchareadin (174 KP) rated Boy, Snow, Bird in Books

May 10, 2018  
Boy, Snow, Bird
Boy, Snow, Bird
Helen Oyeyemi | 2014 | Fiction & Poetry
6
6.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
A girl named Boy, a girl named Snow and a girl named Bird. Three unique names for three unique individuals. It's 1953 and Boy is living in New York, the daughter of a rat catcher. She has never known her mother. Boy "was a girl with a white-blonde pigtail hanging down over one shoulder..." When life with her father got to be too much, she packed her stuff and moved to the farthest place she could get on the bus, Flax Hill, CT.

Quickly, Boy made friends and met a man, Arturo Whitman. Arturo has a daughter named Snow, who the whole town adored. Shortly after Arturo and Boy are married, she becomes pregnant. When she gives birth to her daughter, Bird, the Whitman family secrets soon come to light.

There is an underlying theme in this book with mirrors. The women claim that they do not "see" themselves in them. Is it because they are ghosts? Or is it that their family secrets run so deep that they find it hard to see themselves as they really are?

This book reminded me of books I had to read for school. I enjoyed the storyline as a whole, but reading it, I felt as though there were questions I was supposed to be searching the answers for instead of just enjoying the book. There are so many secrets throughout the entire book with the biggest secret coming at the end. Told in three sections by Boy, Bird, and then Boy again, this is very interesting story about race in the north in the 50's and 60's.