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Dubray Review

The Forgotten Waltz begins with a gathering of friends and family in an Enniskerry garden. Among the guests are Gina Moynihan and Sean Vallely.  Gina is childless and married to Conor whom she refers to as ‘my idea of fun’.  Sean is accompanied by his wife Aileen and his daughter Evie, who is prone to seizures.  This first encounter between Gina and Sean leads to an illicit affair and The Forgotten Waltz is reminiscent of Hanif Kureishi’s Intimacy and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.  Winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2007 with The Gathering, Anne Enright once again creates a world that seems familiar yet which is made more vivid through the deliberate, measured style in which she writes.  I loved this masterful piece of writing that explores whether there really is that ‘one moment when a relationship changes’

Lynn Crampton, Dubray Books Grafton Street

Description

"The Forgotten Waltz" is a memory of desire: a recollection of the bewildering speed of attraction, the irreparable slip into longing. In Terenure, a pleasant suburb of Dublin, in the winter of 2009, it has snowed. Gina Moynihan, girl about town, recalls the trail of lust and happenstance that brought her to fall for 'the love of her life', Sean Vallely. As the city outside comes to a halt, Gina remembers the days of their affair in one hotel room or another: long afternoons made blank by bliss and denial. Now, as the silent streets and the stillness and vertigo of the falling snow make the day luminous and full of possibility, Gina waits the arrival on her doorstep of Sean's fragile, twelve-year-old daughter, Evie - the complication, and gravity, of this second life. In this extraordinary novel, this opening book of secrets, Anne Enright speaks directly to the readers she won with the success of "The Gathering". Here, again, is the sudden, momentous drama of everyday life, the volatile connections between people; that fresh eye for each flinch and gesture; the wry, accurate take on families, marriage, brittle middle age.The same verve and humour and breathtaking control are evident; the ability to merge the ordinary and the beautiful. With "The Forgotten Waltz" Enright turns her attention fully to love - you might even call it romance - as she follows another flawed and unforgettable heroine on a journey of the heart. Writing at the height of her powers, this is Anne Enright's tour de force, a novel of intelligence, passion and real distinction.