You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
scarpuccia 's review for:
The Green Road
by Anne Enright
My overriding impression here was that the quality of the writing deserved a much better novel. It certainly deserved more engaging characters. The Green Road is about a dysfunctional Irish family with chapters alternating between the five members. Often this form of structure causes problems because some characters are almost always much more interesting than others and this is very much the case here. The two daughters I found especially lacking in compelling detail.
It begins with Hanna and there's little that distinguishes this novel from so many others - the overly familiar middle class domestic setting didn't pack any punches. It felt like the same old story told yet again. Then there's a big surprise as the novel jumps to AIDS infested New York. The problem here is that the family member, Dan, barely features at all and the narrative centres on characters who have no place in this novel. This chapter was like some weird incongruous outbuilding in the novel's architecture. We then go to Africa and the relationship between the younger son Emmet and his girlfriend Alice, both aid workers. This was by a country mile the best chapter of the novel and showed how good a novel Anne Enright might write if, instead of the tired old subject of a dysfunctional middle class family, she had been more consistently adventurous in her choice of theme and material. One interesting aspect of the Emmet and Alice conflict was that it marginally came out on the side of the male. It made me realise how often in modern novels the male is shown as the guilty party in the battle of sexes. It was refreshing to have a more balanced perspective. We then switch to Constance, the most conventional of the children and unfortunately the least interesting as well. At the heart of the novel though is the mother who is thinking of selling the family home. Everything comes to a head at a family Christmas dinner. But the gains and losses, the estrangements and reconciliations all seemed very minimal to me as if there really wasn't much of a story here in the first place. Saving grace is that Anne Enright can write a good sentence.
It begins with Hanna and there's little that distinguishes this novel from so many others - the overly familiar middle class domestic setting didn't pack any punches. It felt like the same old story told yet again. Then there's a big surprise as the novel jumps to AIDS infested New York. The problem here is that the family member, Dan, barely features at all and the narrative centres on characters who have no place in this novel. This chapter was like some weird incongruous outbuilding in the novel's architecture. We then go to Africa and the relationship between the younger son Emmet and his girlfriend Alice, both aid workers. This was by a country mile the best chapter of the novel and showed how good a novel Anne Enright might write if, instead of the tired old subject of a dysfunctional middle class family, she had been more consistently adventurous in her choice of theme and material. One interesting aspect of the Emmet and Alice conflict was that it marginally came out on the side of the male. It made me realise how often in modern novels the male is shown as the guilty party in the battle of sexes. It was refreshing to have a more balanced perspective. We then switch to Constance, the most conventional of the children and unfortunately the least interesting as well. At the heart of the novel though is the mother who is thinking of selling the family home. Everything comes to a head at a family Christmas dinner. But the gains and losses, the estrangements and reconciliations all seemed very minimal to me as if there really wasn't much of a story here in the first place. Saving grace is that Anne Enright can write a good sentence.