September Fiction

A rich novel about the rocky relationship of a young woman and her mother is our fiction pick of the month

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The Wren, The Wren

by Anne Enright

(Cape, £18.99)

MAYBE IT’S JUST BECAUSE I’m a bloke—although I like to think it isn’t— but one type of novel I’ve begun to find a bit tiresome is the type whose essential message is that women are great. Not (of course!) that this is a message I disagree with. The trouble is that such novels generally feel not just predictable but strangely needy, as if they’re almost begging for reassurance.

It was, then, with some dismay that I read on the jacket that the new novel by Anne Enright—one of Ireland’s best living authors—is “a testament to the glorious resilience of women”. Surely she too hadn’t gone for something so banal? Well, as luck would have it, I needn’t have worried, because the book itself is far richer and more interesting than that.