Life
1962- ; b. Dublin, ed. Vancouver and TCD, and later entered Creative Writing
course at Univ. of East Anglia where she was taught by Malcolm Bradbury
and Angela Carter; commenced serious writing at Tyrone Guthrie Writer’s
Centre, Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan, 1985; short stories published in Faber Introductions;
trained and worked as producer/director at RTÉ; worked on Night
Hawks; The Portable Virgin (1991), stories, winner of the Rooney
Prize, 1991; wrote first novel, The Wig My Father Wore (1995),
on leaving RTÉ;. m. Martin Murphy, actor; issued What Are You
Like? (2000), which follows lives of twin girls, winner of British-based
Encore Award for best second novel (£10,000), and short-listed for Whitbread;
The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002), based on the true history of
an Irish courtesan in Latin America. ATT
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Works
The Portable Virgin (London: Secker & Warburg 1991), 224pp.; rep.
edn. (London: Minerva 1992), stories; The Wig My Father Wore (London:
Jonathan Cape 1995; Minerva 1996), 216pp., and Do., in German trans.
as Jürgen Schneider, So Fern Engel Sehen (Fischer Taschenbuch
1998), 197pp.; What Are You Like? (London: Jonathan Cape 2000;
London: Vintage 2001), 259pp. [infra]; Enright, Anne, The Pleasure of Eliza
Lynch (London: Jonathan Cape 2002; rep. Vintage 2003), 256pp.[infra]
Miscellaneous, Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (London: Jonathan Cape 2004), 196pp. [infra]; ‘A Man Whose Rhyme Has Come’ [Arthur Riordan's Improbably Frequency], in The Irish Times (3 March 2005) [infra].
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Criticism
John Kenny, ‘ Ferociously-paced magical surrealism’, review of What are You Like?, in The Irish Times (4 March 2000) [infra].
James Wood, review of What are You Like, in Guardian Weekly (23-29 March 2000) [infra].
[Shirley Kelly,] ‘What it’s like to have the future inside you’ [interview with Anne Enright], in Books Ireland (October 2002), pp.235-36 [infra].
Robert MacFarlane, review of Anne Enright, What Are You Like?, in Times Literary Supplement (3 March 2000) [infra].
Rudiger Imhof, review of The Wig My Father Wore (1995), in Linenhall (Winter 1995-95), p.13.
Robert MacFarlane, review of Anne Enright, What Are You Like?, in Times Literary Supplement (3 March 2000).
Roy Foster selects The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (Cape) in ‘Books of the Year’ [column], in Times Literary Supplement (6 Dec. 2002).
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Notes
A. N. Jeffares & Brendan Kennelly, eds.,
Ireland’s Women (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1994) contains
extract [Portable Virgin].
Anne Enright reads ‘Men and Angels’, BBC3 NI (7 Jan. 1997), a collage in three parts including reference to Sir Charles Brewster, the inventor of kaleidoscopes, and his no-name wife who was a dg. of James Macpherson; also, a dg. of a deaf mother who (the dg.) translates sounds into sculpture; and the wife of the inventor of ‘Huegyns Chain’, using his wife’s wedding ring as one the pulling end of the weighting system.
What are You Like? (2000) Bert Delahunty, deprived of his wife through death in childbirth, takes Maria, one of the twins sisters, to the family home in Dublin while the other, Marie, is renamed Rose and grows up in Surrey; in New York the twenty-year-old Maria falls for Anton, a Czechoslovakian, who was one of a procession of boys fostered by Rose’s adopted parents; and with whom he had enjoyed a pre-pubescent relationship; eventually Rose walks into the clothes store in Dublin where Maria works.
Eliza Lynch: b. Cork, 1835; emig. to Paris, with family, as a child; m. French Army vet at 14; stationed in Algiers; returned to Paris alone, aetat. 16; became courtesan; affair with Don Francisco Solano Lopez, eldest son of Paraguay president; travelled with him to Paraguay, 1855; four sons; Lopez and his eldest son killed in battle by Brazilians and reputedly buried by Lynch with her own hands, 1870; returned to Europe; d. in poverty, Paris; bur. Cimetière Père Lachase, but repatriated to Paraguay in the 1930s. (See Books Ireland, October 2002, pp.235-36; interview with Anne Enright.)
NY Times reports on post-Booker prize in London (NYT, 24 Oct. 2004): ‘The novelist Anne Enright, one of Mr. Tóibín’s friends who flew from Dublin for the party, was disappointed for another reason: she had placed a $120 bet, at 10-to-1 odds, on his book, The Master, which is about the life of Henry James. The $1,200 winnings, she said, would have assuaged her envy if Mr. Tóibín had won.’
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)