TUESDAY 10 DECEMBER 2024
7PM to 8PM
Open to all. Hosted online using Zoom Meetings.
TICKETS: Free, booking required.
ACCESSIBILITY: Live subtitles are available using Zoom's Live Transcript function.
The Green Road by Anne Enright
Rosaleen Madigan’s children left the west of Ireland to lead disparate lives across the world. When their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the family house and divide the proceeds, her adult children come back to County Clare for a last Christmas in their childhood home, and are forced to confront their past, present and future selves.
We'll be discussing this book by the multi award-winning Irish novelist with special guest Jo Browning Wroe, author of the bestseller A Terrible Kindness.
To aide the conversation, we have prepared three 'thinking points' to consider when reading The Green Road:
1. To what extent do you think the novel’s matriarch, Rosaleen Madigan, is or isn’t responsible for the family dynamics between her adult children?
2. Emmet, one of the siblings in the story reflects internally on not being able to invite the person he lives with home for the family Christmas, “I am sorry. I cannot invite you home for Christmas because I am Irish and my family is mad.” Do you think Enright manages to evoke the ‘madness’ of all families in the telling of this particular families Christmas?
3. What are your reflections on the narrative structure of the novel, with its switches of time, location and point of view?
The Green Road by Anne Enright is available in paperback, hardback, audio and ebook formats, borrowable from public libraries or to purchase. To see what printed and digital copies are available from Cambridge University Libraries (borrowable by University staff and students), search iDiscover.
About The Really Popular Book Club
The Really Popular Book Club is Cambridge University Libraries' book group. Everyone is welcome to come and discuss a really popular book with the group, library staff, and an expert on the novel. Hosted on Zoom, the book club is completely free and open to everyone, people attend from all over the world. The Really Popular Book Club celebrates the huge range of books at Cambridge University Library. We have more than 8 million books and as a legal deposit library we keep a copy of every book published in the UK, and have done since 1710.
If you haven't attended one of our book club events before, you can find more information at www.lib.cam.ac.uk/bookclub.