Modern life is coolly,brutally satirised at every turn. Nell works in Dublin as a content provider for Meg,an online influencer whose life is dominated by her collection of dogs,all Maltipoos. Nell writes the fake travel pieces for the blog:“Water the colour of peppermint mouthwash,icing sugar sand,hammocks strung between palm trees,a peaceful inner freshwater lagoon that is home to many species of exotic birds.”
Birds dominate the imagery of the novel itself,which concludes with the thought that when everything else has disappeared into landfill,a bird “will perch on top of the lot of it and sing”.
The wren of the title is a mystical bird in Irish mythology. A traditional song,The Wren,The Wren,details the ancient custom of killing a wren on the day after Christmas and taking it from door to door asking for pennies. Nell’s grandfather,Phil McDaragh,borrowed the title for one of his love poems,the second of the 12 poems,some of them translations,in the book.
The startling beauty of the novel,the latest work by Enright,who won the Booker Prize withThe Gathering,lies in the breezy way it moves in and out of its different textures – now sixth-century poetry,now the fractured one-word thoughts of a modern woman,now a form of Joycean stream of consciousness,now a blunt detail of sexual encounter with a stranger,now a tender moment of love,now a vivid description of a rural scene,now a series of incompetent text messages. At all times,the reader feels informed,enclosed in the narrative,eager for the next development.
Nell searches far and wide for love,across betrayals of many kinds,in her own life and also in the life of her mother and grandfather,who abandoned his own young family,went to America,married again. His rewriting of the wren poem can read as his excuse for leaving.