The Green Road - Anne Enright
The family in question are the Madigan family, and their story in The Green Road in 1989 starts on the west coast of Ireland in the small village of Ardeevin in Co. Clare. The novel will pick up the stories of the other family members at later points and in much less ideal circumstances, but it begins with the youngest daughter Hannah. Although treated with some kind of affection for the people and the place, there is no idealisation even here, Enright already hinting that life has hurdles already being put in place. Hannah is only beginning to gain an awareness of her surroundings and realisation that there is a big wider world out there. Her brother Dan upsetting the tight-knit but not particularly happy family unit by telling them he is going away to become a priest, but Hanna discovers he has a girlfriend, Isabelle.
Dan's story takes over with an abrupt change of tone and content in New York in 1991, where he is part of the East Village gay community being ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. The contrast is striking, Enright capturing the rapid changes that society goes through within a relatively short period and the changes that people undergo over a lifetime. Even in Dan's story, seen though the eyes of a third-person narrator, Greg, who is showing the first signs of the disease taking a serious turn (“There are hours and days that change people”, he observes), the bright youthful beginnings that Dan and Billy new relationship out on Fire Island seem to be enjoying are impossible now for him to see from the other side. Dan's life however is still in a state of flux or denial, still engaged to Isabelle, perhaps too wrapped up in himself. “For a moment Dan was an open space, surrounded by a different future to the one he has brought in through the door.”
It's beautiful writing, wonderfully observed and described with precision, but it's clear that The Green Road is not going to be a bundle of laughs either, and sure enough, the next Madigan family member in crisis is Constance. In 1997 Constance is 37, has three children and is at the hospital undergoing a procedure checking for suspected breast cancer. There is inevitably a 'how did I end up here?' kind of contemplation, but the choice of situation that Enright chooses to show the Madigan family members - never at the same time in Part 1, but at significant turning points or moments of realisation - are well observed and true to life. That doesn't sound like a recommendation either - hence the difficulty I've previously had with approaching her writing - but Enright fills even these moments of regret/not regret with insight and a measure natural humour that exists even in such times.
The next family member put under the microscope is Emmet, 38 and an aid worker in Mali in 2002, living with an English co-worker Alice. You can't say that the scope of The Green Road isn't wide and varied, but inevitably for Emmet, it's also troubled. He has suffered a nervous breakdown 10 years previously and despite the challenges of working in Mali, finds that his life and relationship with Alice becomes more complicated when Alice brings a stray dog into the house. For whatever reason - undoubtedly complex and not defined by Enright in any kind of a reductive manner but which could be any combination of issues related to his relationship to his father (Pat Magidan is only briefly present at the start of the novel but you suspect that his influence lies heavily over the family), his mother, the upbringing in "forty acres of rock and bog", the challenges of his work and his nervous breakdown - Emmet seems to suffer from the same deficit of empathy or the ability to love as Dan. His soul is dead, he is practical minded and self-absorbed, with no capacity for sentimentality. But there is a cold passion there, looking to find expression.
Undoubtedly one of the most significant influences on the direction their lives of the siblings, whether as a positive force, neutral or reaction against - is the mother Rosaleen, who we come to aged 76 in Ardeevin in 2005. Enright describes her life at this stage as "one of great harmlessness", but as we bring things up to date with a family reunion planned, that remains to be seen. Keenly feeling the passing of the years and the changes it has brought to her family, Enright again finds a simple but loaded phrase to describe the passing of the years and her part in the changes. “The world she grew up in was so different it was hard to believe she was ever in it”. The past however remains within the memories and objects of the house. Writing Christmas cards thinking of each of her children, she decides it's time to sell the family home.
I've described more than enough of the circumstances of the individuals of the Madigan family - without detailing how they pan out - as it is critical to explain how remarkable Enright's structure is, her handling of time and the insight that each of these frozen moment reveal, but the true success of The Green Road, which I've only given a few random examples of, is the quality of the writing. I've heard that Enright can get quite Joycean and poetic elsewhere, but here the writing is precise and nuanced. It's impressive and almost scary how well Enright knows and describes all the nuances of character and life, not just in Ireland, but in so many different circumstances that life brings; the interaction, the familiarity, the exchanges, the problems, the insecurities. They way they have turned out, the years apart, the shared Madigan history in Ardeevin, you can imagine that it is going to be some reunion in Part 2 of the book. Enright handles it and the resolutions that come with the same powerful delicacy, insight and authenticity of character and situation. And when you can do that, you'll find affection and humour in there too.
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