The Wren, The Wren

The Women's Prize for Fiction shortlisted novel from the Booker Prize-winning author

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.

Carmel had been alone all her life. She had been alone since she was twelve years old. The baby knew all this. They looked at each other; one life into another life, and the baby knew exactly how alone her mother 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 generational saga 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.

©2023 Anne Enright (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Anne EnrightAnne EnrightAoife DuffinOwen RoeLiza RossVintage Digital

Coming of Age

Family Life

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Literary Fiction

Women's Fiction

World Literature

Heartfelt

Thought-Provoking

Funny

Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction World Literature Heartfelt Thought-Provoking Funny

Critic reviews

The Wren, The Wren is a magnificent novel. Anne Enright's stylistic brilliance seems to put the reader directly in touch with her characters and the rich territory of their lives (Sally Rooney, author of NORMAL PEOPLE)

The Wren, The Wren may be her best book yet

Wonderful… This deceptively modest novel is the kind of book that will work on you long after you have put it down

These pages practically crackle with intelligence, compassion and wit. Phil McDaragh is so real I almost googled him. The Wren, The Wren might just be Anne Enright's best yet (Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses)

Anne Enright’s The Wren, The Wren is so good they named it twice, so good I read it twice – and read two different novels, because moral positions are incorrigibly plural in Enrightville

Gritty, sad, sly, riotous... Gem-packed language that fizzes like a sidewalk firecracker. A must-read (Margaret Atwood, author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE (via Twitter))

The Wren, The Wren is Anne Enright at her lyrical, storytelling best (Nicola Sturgeon)

This is the golden age of Irish prose fiction. Of our many prodigiously talented novelist, few have the all-encompassing deftness of touch of Anne Enright

One of my books of any year. It’s about womanhood, youth and that slow, painful, but joyous estrangement that emerges between mother and daughter as life runs its tumultuous course (Michael Magee)

A work of astounding ventriloquism and hard-won hope about women’s lives

Most relevant

I was drawn in to the storytelling. The narration captivating and immersive I felt every emotion of all the characters. The influence of the times, expectations and experience of this Irish family through the eyes and hearts of the women whose lives were impacted by the Poet and his transgressions and lives lived. Beautiful and impactful.