The Green Road by Anne Enright - BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY

The Green Road by Anne Enright

Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Like I said last week, I'm ready to give up Book Beginnings. My time as host has run it's course.

Does anyone want to take over this weekly event to host and make it your own? Please let me know in a comment if you are willing and interested.

Alternately, we can call it good and bring down the curtain. Those interested can continue sharing opening sentences on First Line Friday, hosted by Carrie at Reading is My Super Power.

I'll keep posting one more week, until September 4. If someone volunteers to take over after that, wonderful. If not, I'll see you on First Line Friday!

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Later, after Hanna had made some cheese on toast, her mother came into the kitchen and filled a hot water bottle from the big kettle on the range. 

-- from The Green Road by Anne Enright. With an opening sentence like that, it's no surprise that this novel is about a large Irish family. It just sounds like it, with cheese toast. a hot water bottle, and a big kettle. 

I read Enright's Booker Prize winner, The Gathering, but haven't read any of her other books. I finished this one earlier this week. I liked it, especially the last third, but it didn't grab me as strongly as The Gathering did. The first two thirds read like separate short stories of the lives of the four adult children in the family. Their lives are so different, that they really were separate stories. Only when the four kids gather at their mother's house for Christmas do the four stories come together, although only in the sense that the four characters were in the same room together. There is still no overlap in their stories because they had such individual lives. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below.

 

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 asks participants to share a two-sentence teaser from their book of the week. If your book is an ebook or audiobook, pick a teaser from the 56% point.

Anna at My Head is Full of Books hosts The Friday 56, a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please visit My Head is Full of Books to leave the link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from The Green Road:

Dan was so small in the distance that Billy could not tell if he was heading out or coming home. He sat there, sun cream in hand, waiting for Dan to turn back in, and, after a long while, -t seemed that he had -- definitely, Billy thought -- Dan was definitely closer now.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

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.