Friday, May 08, 2009

YESTERDAY’S WEATHER
Anne Enright – Vintage - $26.99

I have to be honest and say that the part of this collection of short stories that I liked the best was the author’s thoughtful and reflective introduction
She explains that these are stories published over the past 20 years including the first two she ever had published in Faber’s admired First Fiction series back in 1989.
The stories are presented in reverse chronological order, partly, it has to be said, for the comic effect. I may be the only one who is laughing, but it is a great and private joke to see myself getting younger – shedding pounds and wrinkles, gaining in innocence and affectation – as the pages turn”.

Well the reverse chronological order may provide humour but I can tell you it is pretty much the only things that does.

I found the stories on the whole disenchanting, bleak and depressing, like many of the characters within them. But I guess if your characters are mainly working class Irish women dealing with such subjects as middle age mistakes, grief, illness, alcohol abuse, infidelity, bad sex, the change of life and boredom then you are not going to produce a jolly collection.

Anne Enwright is of course the Irish writer who was comparatively unknown internationally until she won the Man Booker Prize in 2007 with her fourth novel, The Gathering. You will recall she was the rank outsider that year with Lloyd Jones being the bookies favourite with Mister Pip. She is a former television producer, in her mid-40’s, married to a theatre director and has two children.
She is a clever, intelligent writer of that there is no doubt, and she has great powers of observation, but for me, these short stories, like her prize winning novel are just a bit too grim.
Footnote:
Reviewed by Bookman Beattie on Nine to Noon, Radio New Zealand National on Wednesday 6 May.

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