Man Booker winner Anne Enright's story collection Yesterday's Weather
is a series of moving glimpses into the lives of ordinary men and women
struggling with the bonds of love, family, and community in an
increasingly disconnected world. It exhibits the arresting images and
subversive wit that mark Enright as one of the most thrillingly gifted
writers of our time.
Yesterday's Weather shows us a rapidly changing Ireland, a land of
family and tradition, but also, increasingly, of organic radicchio,
cruise-ship vacations, and casual betrayals. An artisan farmer seethes
at the patronage of a former Catholic-school classmate, now a successful
restaurateur; a bride cuckolds her rich husband with an old college
friend—a madman who refuses his pills, disappears for weeks on end, and
plays the piano like a dream. Still more startling than loss or
deception are the ways in which people respond: a wife raging at her
husband's infidelity must weigh the real stakes after his affair takes a
tragic turn; confronted with a similar situation, a woman decides to
cheat with, rather than against, her man. Sharp, tender, never
predictable, their sum is a vibrant tapestry of people struggling to
find contentment with one another—and with themselves.
