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The Green Road

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The Green Road

By: Anne Enright
Narrated by: Caroline Lennon
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Novel Award.

Longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.

One of The Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

A book about family, selfishness and compassion on Ireland's Atlantic coast, from the Booker Prize-winner.

Hanna, Dan, Constance and Emmet return to the west coast of Ireland for a final family Christmas in the home their mother is about to sell. As the feast turns to near painful comedy, a last, desperate act from Rosaleen - a woman who doesn't quite know how to love her own children - forces them to confront the weight of family ties and the road that brought them home.

©2015 Anne Enright (P)2020 Penguin Audio Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic reviews

The Green Road is true and rueful, as terribly adult in its clarity as its battered Madigans. (James Wood)
Enright is a shape-shifter who gets into the nerve centres of her creations; the power of her prose lies in its absence of ego. The Green Road is a devastating novel about home and how savage a place it can be. (Frances Wilson)
This novel should confirm Enright’s status as one of our (their?) greatest living novelists. I hope she can be persuaded to do a sequel. (John Sutherland)
All stars
Most relevant
Pleased that i finish it. It was a staggering to finish. Still trying to identified who the children were.

Family story

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Exquisitely written.

A fantastic narrative performance by Caroline Lennon moving fluidly across gender's and cultures to create a completely engrossing world.

Anne Enrights is a unique voice drawing a sharp picture of contemporary Irish family life as revealed through the lives of the four adult siblings as they satellite around their ageing mother.

There are countless remarkable descriptive set pieces in the book with strong poetic images that are hard to shake off - so strong they enter your dreams.

Caroline's character and her hilarious but beleaguered Christmas shopping set piece, for example, provide a highly recognisable episode which beset women can feel!

Yet ultimately as the characters fail to achieve or progress - the reader becomes disappointed in them - perhaps they're too much like us?

There are no archetypal happy resolutions here just continuation.

Compelling but depressing

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The 4 chapters establishing the characters of the 4 children was a good scene setter but may be went on a bit too long. Once the story of the dynamics of the family began I was really hooked. Excellent!

A n intimate view of family relstionshipd

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