Man Booker Prize winner, Anne Enright, has written a novel about three generations of Irish women and the man they need to know more about. Phil McDaragh is a fairly famous Irish poet who deserts his family when his wife Terry is recovering from breast cancer. As a result his youngest daughter Carmel unconsciously raises her daughter, Nell, with no father. Nell, in an attempt to understand Phil, her DNA and her quest to find a satisfactory relationship with a man, studies her grandfather’s life and his poetry.

In an indirect way The Wren, the Wren is a feminist work. It is partially about what women go through when a male deserts the family. Carmel learns to live without a man in her life, Terry creates a fantasy about this man, and Nell searches, often unsuccessfully , for a permanent partner. The Wren, the Wren would lend itself to some good discussions in a woman’s book group.