Anne Enright
Anne Enright
Anne Teresa Enright FRSLis an Irish author. She has published novels, short stories, essays, and one non-fiction book. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. She has also won the 1991 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2001 Encore Award and the 2008 Irish Novel of the Year...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 October 1962
CountryIreland
novel written judged
A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced.
growing-up book believe
If you grow up in Ireland and read books then you really are obliged to attempt your own some time. It is not exactly a choice. I still don't know if I am a writer. Believe me, there are days when I have my doubts.
want
The truth. The dead want nothing else. It is the only thing that they require.
weekend years may
Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.
very-happy has-beens
I became a full-time writer in 1993 and have been very happy, insofar as anybody is, since.
looks mainstream wanted
I never wanted to be mainstream as a writer, but look at what's happened.
lovely old-fashioned raised
I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.
roots narrative monsters
I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from.
grandparent static surnames
In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from.
feelings needs clear
When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.
wall book writing
I have a small room to write in. One wall is completely covered in books. And I face the window with the curtain closed to stop the light hitting the computer.
boring early happen marriage proven recently stories worst wrote
Recently I read the stories I wrote in my early 20s, to put in a volume. And here is this brittle young woman, writing about marriage as, not the worst thing, but the most boring thing that could happen to a person. Now I think I was wrong. I like to be proven wrong.
amazing dull life
There's no such thing as a life that is not normal, or, there's no such thing as a life that is not abnormal. We all have amazing lives; we all have very dull lives.
certain fingers grown taken until
There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten.