The Green Road by Anne Enright

It says on the cover that this woman is the Laureate for Irish Fiction. She thoroughly deserves this recognition. Her work is incisive and truthful and beautifully written. She captures the rhythms of conversation with a perfectly attuned ear. This book is about a difficult mother, getting old, and living in her rambling and quite valuable house in Galway. She reminds me of many mothers, including my own, and frighteningly a bit of myself as well. She’s not nice, she’s not nasty, she’s just human with all the nasty bits and the disappointments and the feelings of love, disappointed or not. Three of her four children have left long ago to live in Dublin and Africa and Toronto. The fourth, whom I find the most interesting, is Constance. She has married well and lives close to her mother, the relationship between them is so like many mother-daughter relationships that it simply has to be drawn from life. Anyway, the four of them come home for Christmas and they bounce off one another like pinballs in an arcade game. I really liked this book because of its truth and its substance.