The Green Road

An Irish Family Come Home

Three years ago, I attended my 50th high school reunion in Milwaukee and saw a city and many people I hadn't seen in years. I also saw the old family home in which I grew up with three brothers and my parents. It was a moving experience. My parents are dead and the four brothers have long been scattered in different American cities. It has been hard to maintain connection as we have gone on to separate lives.

I thought of the visit to my old home, my parents, and my brothers in reading Anne Enright's 2015 novel, "The Green Road". Set in contemporary Ireland, the book tells the story of widow, Rosaleen Madigan and her four children, each of whom goes their own way in life and loses any sense of whatever connection they may have had to their parents and siblings. Of the four children, two brothers and two sisters, one goes to the United States and Canada where he struggles with his gay sexual identity, while another does humanitarian medical work in Africa and Asia which he finds unsatisfying. The two daughters remain in Ireland where they try to make their way. Each individual life tends to be unfulfilled and unhappy, as is the mother's life.

The book is in two parts. The first part consists largely of stories devoted to each of the children separately as they pursue their lives. The second part consists of a family Christmas and its aftermath. Rosaleen brings the family together, bodily if in no other way, when she writes each child to inform them that she is selling the family home. The book shows the family members in their isolation and in their attempts to cohere with one another. A passage late in the novel captures the sense of unfulfilled lives.

"The truth was that the house they were sitting in was worth a ridiculous amount, and the people sitting in it were worth very little. Four children on the brink of middle age: the Madigans had no traction in the world, no substance. They had no money. Dan, especially, had no money, and he could not think why this was, or who might be to blame. But he recognised, in the silence, the power Rosaleen had over her children, none of whom had grown up to match her."

Another moody reflection from the other son follows this passage. Emmet is said to have "poured his life out, like water into the African sands. He felt it keenly -- they all did -- the lack of anything to show for it all. Twenty years saving a world that remained unsaved. If you thought about it, he was as much a fantasist as his dead mother."

This novel has weaknesses in that the book doesn't really hang together as a whole. In addition I never developed much feeling for any of the characters. The strengths of the book consist in individual, highly effective scenes and vignettes and in Enright's beautiful style. With its Irish setting, the book portrays a universal human situation.

The book prompted me to think of my visit to the family home described at the outset of the review. Then, it prompted me to visit the home again, as I was able to google the property and to learn what had happened with it -- the property had sold for a low price, was apparently remodeled inside from top to bottom and then resold for three times the price of the immediately prior sale. I thought of the fate of the little home and of the four brothers.

I was less than fully satisfied with this novel. Yet, reading the book brought back memories of my life and the lives of my brothers. I lingered on these memories and revived them again in the virtual visit I paid to the old house after reading the book. The book made its way into my thought and made me take some action in response. With that, the book ultimately worked for me.

Robin Friedman