Join webchat with award-winning author ANNE ENRIGHT and discuss May book of the month THE GREEN ROAD on TUESDAY 24 May, 9-10pm

[TillyMumsnetBookClub]

Winner of the Irish Novel of the Year 2015, our May Book of the Month THE GREEN ROAD was also longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Award and is currently on the shortlist for the Baileys Prize (announced 8th June). This may all feel familiar to its author, Anne Enright, who won the 2007 Booker Prize with THE GATHERING and in 2015 was made the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Enright's novels are fantastically well-crafted, eloquent and funny - even when they are quite bleak in subject matter. She is also an expert in dissecting family dynamics, and at examining their constant pull of complex emotions. In THE GREEN ROAD, we meet four siblings from County Clare who are set on very different paths. Their stories are tracked over 1980s to present day, across different countries, until they are all called back for Christmas in the family home, by their overpowering and manipulative mother. She announces she will be selling the house, which propels them into a crisis. Each character is beautifully realised, and their difference from each other as adults is contrasted with the sudden immersion into childhood stereotype and ingrained patterns once they are all reunited. What is special about Enright's handling of the family saga is her gift for the perfect sentence. She finds unexpected adjectives, brilliantly exact description, the spot-on emotion. Her writing is lyrical but always unsentimental. There is pleasure in reading every paragraph, and an enormous wisdom throughout the pages.

To find out more, go to our book of the month page, where you can also apply for a free copy - just fill in your details on the book of the month page and we'll post here to let you know when the copies have gone. If you’re not lucky enough to bag one of those, you can always get a Kindle edition or paperback copy here

We are thrilled and delighted that Anne will be joining us to answer your questions about The Green Road, all her previous award-winning novels and her stellar career on Tuesday 24 May, 9-10pm. Please feel free to discuss the book here throughout the month and then come and meet Anne on the night, and ask her a question or simply tell her what you think of her books.

Lovely weekend gift. I'm going to sit in the sun (after last week's snow..) and enjoy.

Thanks very much for my copy, which arrived today. I'll be back with s review.

Thanks very much for my copy, I started reading this weekend and I was totally engrossed. Really great narrative style and well drawn characters, looking forward to the webchat

Finished already. Lovely book. Looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks.

Finished this today- I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I read the whole thing with an Irish accent in my head. I found the relationships between the family members so interesting and true to life- showing the resentments that can build up.

I've just finished this and thought it was a really good book, a very honest look at the lives of all the characters and certainly a lot more meaty than your average chick lit.

I'm about 90% of the way through the book and came on here to see what other readers think because I suspect I'm going to be in the minority on my views. I'll save the proper review for when I have finished, but so far I find it pretty sad - love is a weight, a hindrance, a tether, a disappointment, a lie. I haven't found any evidence of joyful love anywhere....

Thank you mumsnet for my copy I have just finished reading.

I have noted Anne Enright on my radar but have never read any of her books and as this one is all about family dynamics I decided to apply for a copy.

The style and layout of writing draws you in and it's a book quickly read with interesting characters although I didn't particular warm to any of them. Rosaleen in particular as the 'overpowering and manipulative mother' is well written as a formidable matriarch controlling her children by whatever means possible and at times making their lives miserable by a few well aimed barbs. Only towards the end did I feel any possible sympathy for her as she approaches the twilight years of her life.

It's not a book I've enjoyed reading if I'm honest and the humour is cruel and mocking, potentially how families can be with each other as you can't choose your parents, siblings or children. At times I felt like I was reading a set text for an exam as it is an interesting read in the questions it poses about relationships within families from the ties that hold them together to the role each member seems confined to.

I will be viewing the other comments with interest and will pass the book on to friends. I will also read more of her work.

UPDATE**
Due to Anne's hectic schedule we're moving the webchat from Wednesday 25 to TUESDAY 24 MAY, 9-10pm. Please do make a note of the date and join us on Tuesday evening when you can discuss the book with other readers and put your questions to Anne Enright, just a week before the announcement of winner of The Bailey's Prize (The Green Road has been shortlisted). Hope to see you here then.

I found the book different but not engaging and can't say I got any real pleasure from it. As Scamp says above, it felt a bit like a text that you have to read and digest for an exercise, rather than something to immerse yourself into with a bar of chocolate and a glass of wine.

A deliberate distance from all the characters is maintained throughout the book, which meant I couldn’t engage or sympathise with them. Dan’s New York life for example, is assembled by statements from other, peripheral characters so I never got to feel any of the uncertainty, fear, self-loathing, indecision he must have felt in coming to terms with being a gay man. The feelings of others are described, the NY gay scene, the whole AIDS panic and fear – these are all drawn well, but Dan himself is cold and unknown.

We get closer to him at the end, when he’s back in the family home but for me, it was too late at that point – I wanted to know him from the beginning, when he thought he wanted to be a priest and when he married.

I felt the same about Emmet. His interactions with Alice don’t reveal much of his character at all and I found this irritating. A man in his job must surely feel huge compassion for the suffering of others and for mankind in general, but he never exhibits this through thought or word. We learn that others view him as a cold fish too – as he does himself, recognising his own inability to love.

There’s almost a feeling of dislike, of nastiness towards the characters that made it impossible for me to like them too, though I wanted to. Hanna’s alcoholism is almost treated as a generic, middle-class female problem, rather than one that is personal to her and her husband.
Constance was the only character who had real substance for me. We are allowed to get inside her head and to understand her life, feel her joy and sympathise with her cancer scare.

The love that is in the book is not happy or joyful (aside from Constance’s love for her children). Love is a weight, a tie, and is full of resentment, disappointments and unmet expectations.

So while I accept this a clever book, with vibrant imagery and interesting use of language, I don’t love it.

Like the previoau few posters I didn't especially enjoy reading this book, it felt a bit like a chore rather than a pleasure.

The characters were all held at arms length and I found them difficult to get to know or engage with. I think this was in part because the characters were really only skimmed over when examining their individual lives. I didn't warm to any of the characters and found some of their stories a little irrelavent, especially Dans, like a previous poster all the stuff about the early NY didn't really add anything to knowing him.

I thought the writing style was unusual but it made it quite hard for me to get into, it didn't really flow well for me.

Hi Anne (assuming I can post a question well in advance of the actual webchat as I will be quelling a four year old) -

Are you conscious of being perceived differently by reviewers in the UK as that Breed Apart, an 'Irish writer'? I ask because I often wonder when reading reviews of your novels in British broadsheets whether I've read a different novel to the reviewers. I just don't recognise the way your novels are often characterised as some kind of high-grade misery lit, (albeit sometimes with great admiration)? I think you'd need the reading equivalent of a tin ear to think of The Gathering or The Green Road as just, or even primarily a 'sad novel'.

Hi I'm 39+4 weeks pregnant and I'm wondering if I'm having early signs on labour since 6:15pm last night I had diarrhoea and have been about 5 times today and was awake most of last night Peeing and had backache, I can feel a lot of pressure but haven't had any contractions, I've tried everything to start labour myself but nothing has worked, I've tried curry, walking, dancing, bouncing on my ball, yoga and nothing raspberry leaf tea also didn't work... So if these are early signs when will labour actually start?? Hope you can help guys thanks 

Nicoelallen since you've posted in the book review thread it's quite likely that you are in labour... ROFL. Good luck BTW!

CuteHoor for the record, I haven't used the word 'sad' in my review above. My personal view is that it is dispassionate and distant.

nicole good luck. I love that you have posted a live labour thread on Anne Enright's book discussion. Seems so right.

Anyway- I read this some months ago. It's utterly brilliant. Some blazing set pieces eg Constance in the supermarket, Constance in the hospital, Hanna and Emmet in the pub on Christmas Eve. But the whole thing is incredibly subtle and brilliant and warrants many rereads.

My question to Anne-have your readers responded to Constance most out of the four Madigans? I thought she was wonderful.

I found Constance the most engaging too halfstar. I think her pieces are written the most sympathetically.

Oh, I didn't mean you at all, Twitter. I'm talking about UK broadsheet reviews which often seem to be about far bleaker and less comical AE novels than the ones I've read. But then there's some slightly weird transference thing that generally goes on with UK reviewers and Irish writing, anyway, as if there's some kind of Irish-specific set of themes, like mothers and abuse and religion, or we're all still obsessed with the famine and the spectre of James Joyce looms at us over our cornflakes. Like the average English person doesn't have a mother and is immune to having been abused or had a religious upbringing.

Nicole, good luck! As it happens, I went to an Anne Enright Guardian podcast thing four years ago (for The Forgotten Waltz, maybe?) thinking I had unusually strong Braxton Hicks that turned out to be labour.

Thanks for the copy of the book. I was really looking forward to it but I am finding it a real struggle to read. It was the part with Dan in New York I didn't feel that I knew him and it all went down hill from there. As people further up the thread pointed out it's a clever book and the writing is superb but I am not enjoying it.
I feel like that is a failing on my part and I confess that my daughter really enjoyed it but she studied English literature, so it may just be too clever for me

I struggled a little bit with this book, but still, I enjoyed it and I'm glad I read it. In parts it felt like I was reading an English comprehension passage and I was going to be examined in the text afterwards. At other times the expressive language only served to draw me in.
I didn't really feel I could relate to any of the characters, but having had a chance to reflect, the more I think about it, the more I see my (Irish) mother-in-law in Rosaleen.
The novel as a whole is very good, but it did feel more like a series of separate short stories that have been tied together. Having said that, the lives of siblings are like separate short stories, tied together into a family book, so maybe that was intentional.
I'm giving my copy to my mum to read next. I'm sure she'll enjoy it.

CuteHoor Actually, I appear to have lied . I did use the word 'sad' in my very first post on page 1. Apologies.

You post made me laugh . the spectre of James Joyce looms at us over our cornflakes

I'm intending to holiday on the west coast of Ireland later this year so maybe I'll get the humour better afterwards!

I loved this book! The description of the arrival of AIDS was chilling. A very scary time to be gay. I loved the way you wrote about family relationships, particularly between a mum and her kids (and this is predominantly a parenting site so I'm sure I'm in good company). Where is your inspiration from? And was there any personal reason for choosing to write about the 80s AIDS epidemic?

And .... After the success of Brooklin by Colm Tobin (not seen it but read the book) would you like to see your books made into a film?

Thanks very much for my copy of the book - I've just finished reading it.

I saw this review of the book in the New Yorker magazine and thought it was superbly perceptive: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/all-her-children
The "stop-start" nature of the novel mentioned in the review really did leave me focusing - perhaps a bit too much - on whether Enright can 'do' certain settings (early 90s New York, Mali, breast cancer clinic); I concluded that the scenes set in Ireland came across as most authentic.

The book contained some fresh, surprising metaphors, along with a keenly observed and cannily perceptive portrayal of people at their best and worst. This reflects that rare ability, possessed by the very best writers, to get the exact measure of a person or situation and capture it in words.

Despite all the shifting about, and on occasions some loose and vague language, and that the Madigans aren't particularly nice people, I still felt compelled to find out what happened to Rosaleen and her brood. There were some interesting mental health undercurrents that weren't fully explored in the story.

I wonder if the author ever feels pressured by the burden of representation: you are Irish, so whenever you write a family drama you are somehow representing all Irish families. My experience of this is with South Asian literature, so I wondered to what extent (if at all) the author had this in mind when writing the novel and whether it created any challenges.

Finally, I really, really want to know: who poisoned the dog???

Can't wait for this chat tomorrow, so many different opinions and a great book to discuss. Look forward to seeing you all then and hope you can make it, 9-10pm to talk to Anne live...

(And Nicoelallen, am on tenterhooks - please come back and tell us what happened next, in true literary fashion..)

@TillyMumsnetBookClub

Winner of the Irish Novel of the Year 2015, our May Book of the Month THE GREEN ROAD was also longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Award and is currently on the shortlist for the Baileys Prize (announced 8th June). This may all feel familiar to its author, Anne Enright, who won the 2007 Booker Prize with THE GATHERING and in 2015 was made the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Enright's novels are fantastically well-crafted, eloquent and funny - even when they are quite bleak in subject matter. She is also an expert in dissecting family dynamics, and at examining their constant pull of complex emotions. In THE GREEN ROAD, we meet four siblings from County Clare who are set on very different paths. Their stories are tracked over 1980s to present day, across different countries, until they are all called back for Christmas in the family home, by their overpowering and manipulative mother. She announces she will be selling the house, which propels them into a crisis. Each character is beautifully realised, and their difference from each other as adults is contrasted with the sudden immersion into childhood stereotype and ingrained patterns once they are all reunited. What is special about Enright's handling of the family saga is her gift for the perfect sentence. She finds unexpected adjectives, brilliantly exact description, the spot-on emotion. Her writing is lyrical but always unsentimental. There is pleasure in reading every paragraph, and an enormous wisdom throughout the pages.

To find out more, go to our book of the month page, where you can also apply for a free copy - just fill in your details on the book of the month page and we'll post here to let you know when the copies have gone. If you’re not lucky enough to bag one of those, you can always get a Kindle edition or paperback copy here

We are thrilled and delighted that Anne will be joining us to answer your questions about The Green Road, all her previous award-winning novels and her stellar career on Tuesday 24 May, 9-10pm. Please feel free to discuss the book here throughout the month and then come and meet Anne on the night, and ask her a question or simply tell her what you think of her books.

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Just finished reading this book in time for the webchat tonight! I found it an absolute delight to read, although I do agree with some of the ladies above about the characterisation. I thought the strength of the book was Anne's writing style. I loved the way she could evoke a feeling, scene or person in such a lyrical way. Her prose wasn't always easy to understand but you were left with the feeling of what she meant. Unlike a lot of the readers here, I really enjoyed the section of Dan's early days in NY. Anne's language juxtaposed the glamour with the fear of death- I found this fascinating. Overall I found her style insightful, unique and in parts, very funny.

I agree that none of her characters (perhaps bar Constance) were particularly sympathetic. This maybe what Anne intended. However, I don't feel we ever really get to understand why they are the way they are. We get a glimpse of a few incidents at the beginning but then the main part of the book deals with the children in adulthood. We don't hear much about Rosaleen's parenting or her own childhood. I think you can 'fill in the blanks' to some extent- I assumed that Emmet's coldness was due to him being the second son (with Dan being the obvious favourite). Constance, for me, was the most realistic and sympathetic character. I really didn't like Hanna, she came across as a spoilt brat. I think the reader just has to 'go' with the idea that Rosaleen was a cold and distant mother but this felt like the book relied on a cliche to make it work. I wanted to understand Rosaleen much more, instead she felt like a stock stereotype.

Overall although I loved the writing style, I do think the characterisation let the novel down. It felt like different short stories shoved together without a strong underlying narrative. Perhaps it would have been better to focus on just one or two of the children and give more focus on their childhood to help the reader understand their later life. That said, I really loved the ending- a simple and low-key incident where Rosaleen admits fault. It felt redemptive.