The Wren, the Wren

In the opening paragraphs of The Wren, The Wren, Nell describes a psychologist’s investigation of the different ways people think: “Some people have inner lives dominated by speech, body sensations or emotions and yet others by ‘unsymbolized thinking’ that can take the form of wordless questions like, ‘Should I have the ham sandwich or the roast beef?’” (p. 1) Why do you think Anne Enright begins her novel this way?

How do Enright’s metaphors of birds and birdsong weave throughout the book? How do the meanings of these symbols differ for Nell and Carmel?

What might Phil McDaragh’s poem, “On Killiney Hill,” reveal about his view of women and romantic relationships? What might his poem “The Wren, The Wren” reveal about Phil as a father?

Carmel observes that it “was so easy to hate this man—the facts spoke for themselves—but it was still hard to dislike him. And it was devastatingly easy to love him” (p. 222). How did you react to Phil’s confession that his wife got sick, and “the marriage did not survive”? (p. 222) Do you think society often overlooks the bad behavior of artists?

How does Carmel’s style of mothering differ from her mother, Terry’s?

At Phil’s funeral, a poet from Cork says that “every town needs a poet . . . in order to make them feel like someone” (p. 82). Do you agree?

When Carmel is sixteen years old, Phil writes to her: “Don’t be good, [your mother] will tell you to be good, but there is no need” (p. 86). Is this advice valuable? Does Carmel ultimately follow it?

Nell describes her “Love is a tide” tattoo as a “message to my future self, the kind of truth I wanted to prove over time” (p. 138). What do you make of this tattoo’s message in the context of the McDaragh family’s history?

More than anything in the world, Phil’s American wife, Connie, “would have liked a poem for herself. This, she did not get” (p. 226). Why do you suppose Phil wrote poems for all the women in his life except Connie?

When Carmel plays Phil’s interview on YouTube once more at four in the morning, she sees “her daughter’s face breaking through her father’s face” (p. 234). Why do you think “this is what she had been looking for”?

After Terry’s death, a poet named Harvey sends the McDaragh women a curious letter of condolence. Harvey writes that Terry “accepted everything that happened [with Phil], the bad along with the good, because she had known a great love” (p. 241). Why do you suppose this letter later mortifies Nell?

“It is important to be careless,” Phil once declared. “I am a man walking the road—that is the meaning of the word ‘poet,’ for me. A man walking the road” (p. 254). Does this credo suit Nell?

In her Author’s Note, Anne Enright references the biblical parable in which Jesus visits the home of two women, Martha and Mary (Luke 10:39). Martha tends to Jesus’s needs and is too distracted to hear his words, while her sister, Martha, sits at his feet and absorbs his gospel. “It seems to me that women switch from Marthas to Marys from generation to generation: some get to tend and others to believe” (p. 276). How does The Wren, The Wren bear out this idea? Have you observed this pattern in your own family?

Enright also writes in her Author’s Note: “It seems I invented Nell in order to love her. Her mistakes may be banal or terrible, but they are her own, and her voice, full of verve and wit, holds much of my hope for the future” (p. 276). What hope for the future does Nell’s journey offer or represent?