The Award Tally

The Wren, The Wren

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The Wren, The Wren won The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, New Statesman and TLS Book of the Year 2023 and was one of the BBC's 25 Best Books of the Year 2023. Carmel had been alone all her life. The baby knew this. They looked at each other, and all of time was there. The baby knew how vast her mother's loneliness had been. Nell - funny, brave and so much loved - is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell's leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. And across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel's famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions. This is a meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A multigenerational novel that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women in the face of promises false and true. Above all, it is an exploration of the love between mother and daughter - sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent.

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Publisher
Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
Year
2023
ISBN-13
9781787334601
Genre
Fiction
Topics
Mother-daughter relationshipsFamily trauma and inheritanceMultigenerational family sagaLegacy of a famous parentLove and resilience

Awards

Other awarded books from Anne Enright