In praise of Anne Enright, by Claire Kilroy

I first got Anne Enright’s work – as in I felt it, I understood it, I bought it – when I read her third book, What Are You Like? She delineated with great compassion and verve the emotional landscape of young women in a wholly convincing and engaging way.

I had read novels about female depression before, but they involved Jean Rhys throw-yourself-into-the-sea levels of drama. This was different. It wasn’t about male oppression or unspeakable trauma or the martyrdom of Irish womanhood. The world it was set in felt real, and the girls in it felt real too. The Everyman is a common figure in literature, but Anne introduced the Everygirl and demanded that the literary world take her seriously.

Motherhood often signals the dissipation of a woman (writer)’s brilliant career, as it blasts down the door of the Room of One’s Own that Virginia Woolf asserted was a necessity for a female writer. Anne, however – because she is an empathetic genius – has managed to write from within the chaos of motherhood, and to write brilliantly, and to raise her kids brilliantly, and to be brilliant in general, be it on the page or on stage or in person. She always uses her considerable powers for the good, and champions others whenever she can, which is why she is so loved.

Other favourites: Jennifer Johnston and Paula Meehan

"There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick."
The Gathering

Claire Kilroy’s novels include All Names Have Been Changed and The Devil I Know