"THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ" by Anne Enright

4 out of 5

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• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 465 KB
• Print Length: 264 pages

Synopsis:

• Anne Enright chronicles an affair between 32-year-old Gina Moynihan, and Seán Vallely, a rich, dutiful husband and a devoted if somewhat inept father to the otherworldly, epileptic Evie, not yet 13. Set against a backdrop of easy money, second homes, and gratuitous spending, the dissolution of Gina's and Sean's marriages is both an antidote to and a symptom of the economic prosperity that gripped the country until its sudden and devastating fall from grace in 2008: "In Ireland, if you leave the house and there is a divorce, then you lose the house.... You have to sleep there to keep your claim.... You think it is about sex, and then you remember the money." There are, as with any affair, casualties, but what weighs most heavily on Gina is not what will become of her husband, Conor, but rather Evie, who sees Gina kissing her father, and innocently asks if she might be kissed too, oblivious to the fact that this moment heralds the end of her family. She eventually becomes all too aware that her father is gone and that she's stuck with her sad, neurotic mother. And so the question that remains at the end of this masterful and deeply satisfying novel is not just what will happen to Ireland, but what will happen to Evie? 

My view:

"I met him in my sister's garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first. There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the late summer light and the view. I put him at the bottom of my sister's garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn. Half five maybe. It is half past five on a Wicklow summer Sunday when I see Sean for the first time. There he is, where the end of my of my sister's garden becomes uncertain. He is about to turn around - but he doesn't know this yet. He is looking at the view and I am looking at him......."

I truly enjoyed this novel, especially Anne Enright's prose. The characters came to life vividly. As affairs are concerned, can it ever be the right thing to do? This is in my opinion what drives the story...as in any such situation 'the couple' is never alone, always close by are family members who continue to live life often unaware...if not uneasy about their spouses. 

Is there ever an excuse so blatant which can excuse an affair? This Anne Enright tries to find out while taking us along into this forbidden territory.

I am looking forward to reading her previous novel which won the Booker Prize "THE GATHERING"