This is a fantastic novel. Anne Enright is such a pro. There is nothing about the human condition, character or temperament that passes unnoticed. Her writing is flawless, and I love the fresh attitude to adultery and motherhood, she so honestly and entertainingly presents. It’s set at the tail-end of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger and considers the flamboyant and gaudy middle-class actualities of the day: the trophy wives, brunches and barbeques, interior decorators and designer hand-bags.
Gina is in the midst of an adulterous affair with Sean and she’s basically trying to make sense of the what, how and why of it all. Sometimes you get caught up in the events of life without really knowing how you feel about them. There comes a point where you need sit down and take stock and that’s what Gina is doing, remembering and making sense.
She recalls too, with such passion, the first meetings, the romance and seductions, the hotel rooms where ‘only the air knew what we had done. The door closed so simply behind us; the shape of our love in the room like some forgotten music, beautiful and gone.’
The only thing standing between Gina and the serial adulterer she’s in love with, is his daughter Evie, ‘the woman he loves but can never desire.’ Trying to win over this, now nearly 12 yr old, is tough going for child-free Gina, who has little patience with kids and can’t understand why her sister Fiona indulges them and their friends. At a party, where Fiona serves up Lasagne with real linen napkins, real glasses and cutlery, Gina thinks, ‘These were big, uncomfortable children, not grown ups - throw a bag of tortilla chips at them, I thought, and retire’ - brilliant! A woman after my own heart. I love too, the way she describes Sean’s prowling around her friends baby ‘he was like something on David Attenborough, one of those silverback gorillas maybe, who has forgotten where baby gorillas come from, then Mammy Gorilla pops one out, and he doesn’t know what to do. Cuddle it? Eat it? Pick it up and throw it in a bush?.’
Gina’s attempt to construct an acceptable account of her life before and after Sean, bring to surface some hidden insecurities. I think the impact of her Father’s drinking and subsequent death when she was young, sibling rivalry, the death of her Mother and unspoken concerns about Sean’s infidelities, past and possible, reveal a more frightened character than she would have us believe. Someone a lot less conniving and indifferent to the hurt caused by mistrust and betrayal. She’s an ordinary woman, whom I am fascinated by.
The Forgotten Waltz is an honest portrayal of a universal theme, it’s a keeper, a story of love, wonderfully told.