The Green Road
The Green Road
Book for March 2016
Group 3

was published in 2015. The novel is structured into five dated parts, each bearing the names of one of the main characters. The first segment is set in 1980 in a small town in the west of Ireland, where the farmer’s wife, Rosaleen, takes to her bed in frustration after her oldest son Dan announces his intention to join the priesthood. Next it’s 1991, and Dan’s been on New York’s gay scene for five years. 1997 and back in Ireland his sister Constance, mother of three, awaits a mammogram, reflecting on the shortness of time between breast-feeding and breast cancer. In 2002 younger brother Emmet, an NGO worker in Mali, is in an expiring relationship with a colleague. In 2005 Dublin sister Hanna, a stalled actress and new mother, is getting drunk, wondering about the point of everything.

For one last Christmas the four siblings return to the tumbledown family home in County Clare that imperious mother Rosaleen is planning to sell, cashing in on the Irish property boom before the debt crisis. There they take small steps forward into recognising the realities and limitations of maternal love.

About the Author
Anne Enright

was born 11 October 1962 in Ireland. She received an English and philosophy degree from Trinity College, Dublin. Her early work has been compared by critics to that of Flann O'Brien. Before Enright became a full-time writer she was a television producer and director for RTÉ in Dublin and produced the RTÉ programme Nighthawks, she then worked in children's programming. Her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize.