THE GREEN ROAD
Available now in hardcover and ebook. Coming to
paperback in May 2016.
From internationally acclaimed author Anne
Enright comes a shattering novel set in a small
town on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. The Green Road
is a tale of family and fracture, compassion and
selfishness—a book about the gaps in the human
heart and how we strive to fill them.
Spanning thirty years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch
of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling
irreparably apart.
Available now in hardcover and ebook. Coming to
paperback in May 2016.
From internationally acclaimed author Anne
Enright comes a shattering novel set in a small
town on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. The Green Road
is a tale of family and fracture, compassion and
selfishness—a book about the gaps in the human
heart and how we strive to fill them.
Spanning thirty years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch
of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling
irreparably apart. As they grow up, Rosaleen’s four children leave the west
of Ireland for lives they could have never imagined in Dublin, New York,
and Mali, West Africa. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother
announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her
adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their
childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold.
A profoundly moving work about a family’s desperate attempt to recover
the relationships they’ve lost and forge the ones they never had, The Green
Road is Enright’s most mature, accomplished, and unforgettable novel to
date.
- W.W. Norton & Company
- Hardcover
- May 2015
- 304 Pages
- 9780393248210
Buy the Book
$26.95
About Anne Enright
Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now
lives and works. She has published three volumes of stories, one book of
nonfiction, and five novels. In 2015, she was named the inaugural Laureate
for Irish Fiction. Her novel The Gathering won the Man Booker Prize, and
her last novel, The Forgotten Waltz, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for
Excellence in Fiction.
Praise
“With language so vibrant it practically has a pulse, Enright makes an
exquisitely drawn case for the possibility of growth, love and transformation
at any age.”—People
“Enright…is a master of emotional excavation. …Through her wise
and majestic book, [she] shows us the beauty even in life’s harsh terrain.
—O Magazine
Discussion Questions
All of the children move out of Rosaleen’s orbit and
establish their own lives elsewhere. How does their
homecoming affect them?
Rosaleen writes distinct Christmas cards to each of her
children. What does her card to each child tell you about
their relationship? What do the cards tell you about her?
After Dan announces his decision to become a priest, Rosaleen says, “I
made him. I made him the way he is. And I don’t like the way he is. He
is my son and I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me either” (page 34).
What role does dislike play in her relationship with Dan?
Enright writes, “Emmet . . . was drawn to suffering—it was, after all,
his job” (page106). Is his interest in suffering heroic or self-absorbed?
Dan, Hanna, Constance, and Emmet all have aspects of their private
lives that they do not share with one another. What do they hide from
one another, and why?
Emmet is described as not having “the helplessness in him that love
required” (page 249). From Dan during the AIDS crisis in New York to
Rosaleen on the green road, how are helplessness and love portrayed
as related in the novel?
Toward the end of the novel, Enright describes Rosaleen on the green
road: “there were gaps between things, and this frightened her. This
is where Rosaleen was now. She had fallen into the gap” (page 266).
What does this “gap” mean for Rosaleen and her relationship with the
green road?
Pat Madigan is largely absent throughout the narrative. How does his
absence shape the novel?
Anne Enright has said that a major theme of The Green Road
is compassion. How do members of the Madigan family show
compassion to one another?
Of Rosaleen, Enright writes, “her life was one of great harmlessness”
(page 149). Do you agree?
The house in County Clare is the most prominent home in the
novel. How have Rosaleen’s children chased, established, or resisted
establishing their own homes?