No Place Like Home
- Nancy Novick
- Sep 24
- 2 min read
How many basic plots are there in fiction? Writers and academics, have posited that there are anywhere between 3 and 36.* The relative merits of these ideas, and which plots are universal across cultures, might be a discussion for another time, but as a reader, I have to confess that the one that most reliably resonates with me are those of leaving home with a subsequent return or reunion.
Sitting squarely in that category is Anne Enright’s The Green Road (2015), a beautifully written account of an Irish family that covers a time span of roughly 30 years, and culminates in the return of the four adult children to their childhood home in County Clare, where their mother remains under physically and emotionally difficult circumstances. Enright’s unsentimental, but lyrical portrayal of both the land and each family member’s trajectory lends the novel its power.
While the stories of each of the adult children are compelling, among the passages I liked best were those that focused on Rosaleen, the tough, volatile, withholding, and often impossible mother. Widowed for many years, she clearly has her favorites, which does not include the daughter who has sacrificed her own well-being to care for her.
But Rosaleen is not an unadulterated villain. She has a side that is hidden from her children, the part of her that thinks “Beauty, in glimpses and flashes, that is what the soul required. That was the drop of water on the tongue.” And a sensual one. In the long passage told from her point of view we learn about her early courtship with her soon-to-be silent husband, the man she spent decades with (though others thought she had “married down”), and the pleasure of lying in his arms that calls to mind the Molly Bloom section at the end of Ulysses. (Much of which I’ve surely forgotten, except for that final affirmation: yes I said yes I will Yes.)
Beyond the compelling story and provocative questions the novel raises—what do adult children owe their parents and how does one reconcile the clash between the cultural beliefs and practices of others with one’s own, to name just two – Enright beautifully captures what it’s like to return to a childhood home, when your life has taken you physically and psychologically far away, and the ways in which objects stir dormant memories, thoughts and impressions of the child you once were.
Thanks to DB for recommending this remarkable novel.
*Reference: Three, six or 36: how many basic plots are there in all stories ever written?
Alison Flood, The Guardian
Wednesday 13 July 2016
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