by Anne Enright
First published 2009
The Hegarty family converges on Dublin when Liam dies. Nine siblings gather for their wayward brother's funeral, but alcohol did not kill him alone. Something happened to Liam as a child in their grandmother's house during the winter of 1968. That buried trauma shaped his destruction decades later. The family confronts what they knew and what they chose to ignore about Liam's suffering. Old resentments surface as siblings navigate their complicated relationships with each other and their dead brother. The wake becomes a reckoning with family secrets and the ways childhood wounds echo through adult lives. Enright explores how desire and disappointment intertwine across generations. The novel reveals how the body holds memory and pain in ways that determine our paths more than any cosmic design.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, grief
Setting: Dublin, Ireland
Period: 1968, 20th-century
272 pages · Paperback · Vintage Books USA
Content warnings: child-abuse