The Green Road

THE GREEN ROAD

by Anne Enright

 

Nominations: Booker Longlist 2015, Carnegie Longlist 2016, Dublin Finalist 2017, LA Times Finalist 2015, Women’s Prize Finalist 2016

 

Date Read: August 2, 2023

 

The Madigan Family is having a reunion of sorts. The widows matriarch, Rosaleen, has managed to get all of her adult children to come home for Christmas. This is a family with some harmony, a lot of disharmony and a large splash of crazy. And they are bringing it all under one roof for the last time. Rosaleen has decided to sell the family home and this will be their last get-together there.

 

Only Constance (hence the name?) has remained in their hometown. She is the one her mother turns to for support and a sympathetic ear but it wears Constance down. Not to mention she has children of her own and has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. She is literally on the ragged edge. 

 

Dan is the golden child and favored by Rosaleen. He was supposed to join the priesthood but after a summer in New York’s gay scene, there’s no way he can move forward with that plan or the plan of marrying his high school sweetheart, Isabella. He is now in a stable relationship with Ludo and planning on getting married. It’s unclear what Rosaleen feels about him being gay but his siblings are all very supportive.

 

Emmett is hell-bent on saving the world. When he’s in Mali, he’s living with his girlfriend Alice but she ends up dumping him because he just isn’t able to share any emotion. While Emmett has moved back to Ireland and is still working to save the planet, he pines for Alice and a recent letter kindles hope. It’s still unclear, however, if he is able to feel deeper or will remain only on the surface of everything around him.

 

Finally, Hanna, a wannabe actress,  has a toddler but she’s been taken by the baby daddy due to her drinking. She is in the midst of a full-blown alcoholic crisis. Her partner knows it. Her family knows it. Even Hanna knows it. But so far, no one has intervened or insisted she get help. 

 

The star of this circus is Rosaleen who is slowly slipping in memory and cognition (dementia?). She is thrilled with seeing her children again but throws tantrums like a little kid when she doesn’t get enough recognition or the kind of recognition she feels she deserves. She even skips out on her own Christmas dinner, dramatically fleeing to the bogs and getting stuck there. Only a Christmas night search party can bring her home.

 

Enright is so inciteful on the dynamics and dysfunctions of family and how money, history and the distractions of life can lead us all so far astray. What is home? Is it the actual building, the sense of togetherness or a mythical place that you can never quite get back to?

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