Author Profile
AN IRISH
FA M ILY
IMAGINED
BY SINÉAD O’SHEA
In her novel The Green Road, pub- lished this month by Norton, Irish author Anne Enright tells the story of the Madigans, a fam- ily from County Clare in western
Ireland who scatter to cities and countries far from
home.
When we meet at a Dublin cafe, Enright,
who won the Man Booker Prize in 2007 for The
Gathering, tells me that a friend described her new
book as “Rosaleen’s accommodation issue,” which
is not an entirely facetious summary. Rosaleen,
the Madigan matriarch in the The Green Road,
is the blood and marrow of this new novel, and,
according to Enright, she is based on two sources:
the poetry of Emily Lawless and King Lear.
“Rosaleen’s a townie—a step up from the rest,”
Enright says. “She was the daughter of a chemist,
and chemists had such power in Ireland, espe-
cially until the mid-’70s. Though in reality all
they sold was coatings—biological Vaseline.”
The result, inevitably, is four children who
doubt themselves. The woman who has no agency
in her public life and then exploits her power in
the home is a staple of Irish literature and life.
P
HO
TO©HUGH
C
H
ALO
NE
R
Anne
Enright
