The Forgotten Waltz

Feb 22, 2013 Leslie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a book of social criticism and satire, seriously weakened by its uninteresting, dimly described, humanoid characters. Anne Enright depicts this generation of Irish yuppies as vacuous nonentities, almost psychopathic in their disregard for conscience. This does not add to the strength of her indictment. Instead, it produces a dull book, very easy to abandon.

Taken paragraph by paragraph, this is a well-written book. As a whole, it disappoints.

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Apr 18, 2013 Jeni Bates rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've liked novels by English and Irish authors I've read in the past (Maeve Binchy, Phillipa Gregory,etc.). In Enright's novel, however, I found the language, wording and even some ideas so colloquial that I didn't understand at all what was trying to be said. Maybe it was this occasional lack of understanding that made it hard to really get into The Forgotten Waltz. I liked the main characters ramblings and way of looking back on things, but at times her rants grew tedious and pointless and I f...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Jo Case rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

With her Booker-winning novel The Gathering, Anne Enright gained a raised profile and a new following. This, her first novel since, again takes up the theme of family connections and domestic secrets, in a story that centres on an affair.

Gina meets Sean, her sister’s neighbour, at her niece’s birthday party – and again on a beach holiday. There are prickles of interest, but no real connection. When Gina’s employer needs to hire a management consultant, she suggests Sean, and the wheels are in tr...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, kindle

This book has been sitting on my Kindle for quite some time, and I started it while also reading Moby Dick, as some light reading in amongst the frozen seas of the whale hunt text. There is some gorgeous writing about love in here, about broken hearts, about broken homes, about disappointment, and about Ireland. Mmm, and about business travel, about the coldness of houses in winter when all there is, is a boiler to heat a house and then radiators in the rooms, and that's not enough sometimes.

It...more

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Feb 26, 2013 J. Robinson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The best books for me are the ones I learn from--about life, about myself, about the world, about writing. This novel is so much more than a novel simply about an affair. In fact, details such as their sexual encounters aren't shared in detail with the reader--why write what has been written about, experienced, by anyone who has ever had an affair? Not necessary. And not what the book is ultimately about. What is enthralling for this reader is the sharing of what is going on in 34 year old Gina...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Andy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have to admit I bought this book because of the blurb. It just sounded so mysterious and seemed to promise a menage-a-trois between father, daughter and daddy's new girlfriend. Maybe that is the theme or maybe it is not: I've now finished the book and still cannot tell.

To start with the positive: I really enjoyed the romantic way the author described the affair between Gina and Sean. The scenes of the first part are written in a poetic kind of way that was quite interesting for me. However, my...more I have to admit I bought this book because of the blurb. It just sounded so mysterious and seemed to promise a menage-a-trois between father, daughter and daddy's new girlfriend. Maybe that is the theme or maybe it is not: I've now finished the book and still cannot tell.

To start with the positive: I really enjoyed the romantic way the author described the affair between Gina and Sean. The scenes of the first part are written in a poetic kind of way that was quite interesting for me. However, my problems started in the second part: Suddenly we are somewhere in the future, a lot of things have happened in between. The continuing mention of the financial crisis in many contexts without actually going into it any further annoyed me. While the whole break-up of Gina and Connor was again very good to read, the relationship Gina and Sean now appeared to have seemed completely off to me: Did he leave his wife or didn't he? He does not seem to be committed to the relationship while Gina seemed to enjoy being treated as an after-thought and as the person Sean could push all his mistakes at.

Aside from this development, the story line was not consistent for me: While Evie was mentioned some at the beginning, she was of no importance for most of the story, until suddenly at the end of the book her existence seemed to be what everything boiled down to: If she had not been, gotten sick etc then Sean and Ailleen would not have had so many problems and... And then what exactly? Even before Evie was there Sean had affairs (another thing I cannot get over: If you know you are only the last of many, would that not give you some thought as to the character of your partner? Gina, on the other hand, just seemed to ignore it.), so that did not change. The fact that Evie saw her father and Gina also has no consequence, or how believable is it that a child develops strange psychological problems due to some unnamed tension between her parents or a kiss?

To sum up, I was quite disappointed from this book: inconsistent characters and story lines plus some hang-ups with sudden psychological problems never to be explained. The writing style, though, is really top-notch in the right moments!(less)

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Feb 12, 2013 Diana H. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The Forgotten Waltz is a narrative story about a young woman who casually meets a man that she is destined to be with years later.

Of course at the time they meet, he (Sean) is married with a small daughter (Evie) and she (Gina) is living with her soon-to-be husband. In the years to come, Gina marries and settles into married life. But in the background she continues to casually meet Sean and his family in social settings as the family is friends with Gina’s sister and her family.

As is the nature...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction

I liked this book. I think I did, anyway. I mean, perhaps I didn't but I just forgot. On the other hand, maybe I didn't forget and I'm just being coy about memory. But then, maybe I do remember everything completely, but I'm just lying outright. I think I liked the book.

If that is an irritating introduction to a review, try reading 230-odd pages of a book written entirely in that vein.

Enright plays with the nature of memory while her protagonist forward slash narrator plays with the nature of an...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anne Enright always pulls me up short. It is as if she is hidden on my shoulder, reading my mind. She writes with a dreamlike yet direct quality noticing details others might not bother to mention. It is like daydreaming when your mind falls upon something you had long forgotten from the past. The stories always,dot about in time as she dwells on one thing that leads onto another, but not always chronologically. I don't always understand what she is saying - it is so personal to the character. B...more Anne Enright always pulls me up short. It is as if she is hidden on my shoulder, reading my mind. She writes with a dreamlike yet direct quality noticing details others might not bother to mention. It is like daydreaming when your mind falls upon something you had long forgotten from the past. The stories always,dot about in time as she dwells on one thing that leads onto another, but not always chronologically. I don't always understand what she is saying - it is so personal to the character. But I don't think that matters. I found this a simpler story to follow than The Gathering but as with that, was entirely engrossed to the end.

She describes the pain of misunderstood family members eg her mother's grieving when her kids just want life to go on as normal. And is brutally honest eg saying the "right parent" died first as life was easier without her father. I feel guilty and ashamed when i too have not empathised with those who are experiencing something i have not yet encountered.

Her characters are often distracted women driving or walking around empty streets at night - unable to form attachments to people of places. Probably, many of us feel adrift, lonely, unsure of where life is going to take us and unable to act assertively. I'm always lulled into the dreamy calm of her writing and so am surprised when I don't like the speaking character. This one, empty, hard drinking, essentially single (often forget Conor is still there!) unsure of what she wants in life - panicked or depressed by money and mortgages. Actually the Irish economic peak and collapse create a neat backdrop to an affair built on Gina's unrealistic dreams. She feels hemmed into her marriage, and the mortgage ties it brings. Then she roams around an empty house, that will not sell, trying to convince herself that her new (often absent) live-in lover is providing the fulfilment she wants.

Sex, is never simple or as passionate as it should be - and refreshingly, Enright feels no need to describe it in any detail. The build up and fallout are what interests her. And Gina's row with Conor on the beach on p73 - we just hear her feelings - there is no dialogue to let us know what was actually said. It all just leaves her feeling Life is a "Box" and she walking on the beach, wants to be free. But by the end, she is constantly waiting for Sean in the empty house, rather than a box, tiptoeing around his daughter. Emotionally, she struggles to have a relationship with the child, just as she struggles with all other relationships.

Emotionally Gina is undeveloped and I think this is intended. I struggle to see much difference between the two men and what exactly she wants out of her relationships or career. I wonder if this is often the case, when someone wants out of a liaison but falls into a similar one, accepting second best and sex rather than going it alone until the right person and true passion comes along?

Luckily, through all this gloom wit seeps through unexpectedly: "sitting infront of the real flames of my mothers gas fire", the grim NYD drinks party and "other women I have heard described by naked men". The "copulatory crackle " in the air!!

Having recently lost my father and struggling with a mother and brother i feel little connection with, I am fascinated by Enright's descriptions of parent/sibling relationships and how we behave when moving on after a death. We have to dwell in the past and relive some difficult memories in order to accept painful truths about ourselves and our shortfalls before we can move on.

Apologies for this meandering review! Even though my life is very different to the main character and she is not at all likeable, i can relate to and empathise with alot of her emotional baggage and i am left looking deeply through my memories and the mess inside my own head. Luckily I have a loving family and warm home of my own to return to!!(less)

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Dec 08, 2012 Bücherplanet rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ich habe hin und her überlegt ob ich mich über dieses Buch "hermachen" soll oder nicht.... Die Leseprobe habe ich fast "verschlungen" - fest davon überzeugt "dieses Buch unbedingt lesen zu müssen". Und dann: Las ich die Rezensionen. Und dachte mir: okay, vielleicht doch nicht so gut?!?! Aber auch bei diesem Buch war es so, wie es nunmal oft im Leben ist: man muss sich seine eigene Meinung bilden. ;) und ich habe dieses Buch dann in 2 Tagen fertig gelesen. Okay, es gibt hier weder, wie von manche...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Zoe Brown rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book taught me a couple of things about myself as a reader. First, I don't enjoy first person narratives like I used to. The characters are naturally too self-absorbed and unless they are complex, insightful people, their view of the other characters and their situation is too limited. In this story, a married woman with little self-knowledge begins a relationship with a married man - a man she never seems to fully understand and so we, as readers, don't really understand him either. Enrigh...more This book taught me a couple of things about myself as a reader. First, I don't enjoy first person narratives like I used to. The characters are naturally too self-absorbed and unless they are complex, insightful people, their view of the other characters and their situation is too limited. In this story, a married woman with little self-knowledge begins a relationship with a married man - a man she never seems to fully understand and so we, as readers, don't really understand him either. Enright can compose a terrific sentence, but her main character lacks so much substance that she can't express why she's so taken with her lover. I gather that the author's intention was to write about desire – mostly the sexual kind (the character is very focused on sex) and indirectly as a metaphor for the desire that generated the economic collapse, which effects her (but rather at arm's length, I thought) in Ireland. But as a reader, sexual desire necessarily begins in the head; to experience what the character feels, I have to know what's so exciting about this guy, what makes him so attractive – and seriously, I didn't come close to understanding her attraction to this older man philanderer with an obsessive wife and a psychologically (and possibly physically?) damaged daughter. The character clearly loves sex and is always hungry for more, but she seems to have no idea what turns her on.

Secondly, I learned that I enjoy novels more that take me a little bit beyond the everyday, that somehow make life more intense, slightly heightened in some way, that make my world bigger. Enright probably does a fine job of describing the everydayness of sexual temptation and its consequences (though surprisingly there are no actual descriptions of sex in the book) – but I don't want to descend down into everydayness. I have that, well, every day. I want books that introduce me to characters that I might never know otherwise, people who live larger than I do, even slightly larger, but certainly not smaller. Even Ireland, in Enright's book, is bland and could be any suburban setting in America. A lot of modern novels end up being like Facebook posts but longer and better written – a rendering of the quotidianl, but not much more. Give me characters like Anna Karenina to explore the consequences of passion, not a mundane, pablum version of desire, but the big, wild, risky tough kind, especially one that plunks me down in a setting wholly different from my own. No more "brilliant evocations of the everyday" for this reader!
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Jun 03, 2012 Dirk rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the second book I've read recently where an important element of the book was the fraught relation between a woman and her lover's daughter by another woman (the other was True by Riikka Pulkkinen). This book is narrated by a 32-year-old Irish woman beginning in Ireland's early 21st century economic boom and ending in its bust. She is married to one man, but drops the spoiler early in the text that in the end she is living with another. Thus the plot, which hinges on how their relationsh...more

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May 29, 2012 Wendy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The prose is gorgeous but keeps its distance. With Gina as the sole narrator, we only hear her perspective, and from what I can gather, she is a difficult person to know. Clues to her shallow, self-absorbed behavior are revealed in bits about her childhood and her relationship with her "pretend everything is perfect" mother (who even hides her declining health from her family). Even Gina's sister is too concerned with pretenses to feel authentic.

As I type this, I can't help but wonder if Enrigh...more

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May 28, 2012 Holly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As I started reading this book I thought I had read it before...then I realized that I had started it previously but put it down after about 50 pages. Something about it hadn't clicked for me the first time but I had ordered it from the library again without realizing it and so decided to give the book a go again since it was a holiday and I had a free afternoon. This time I got through the whole book but I'm not terribly excited that I did. It's basically a book about an affair between two peop...more

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May 16, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anne Enright won the 2007 Booker for The Gathering I liked it, liked it, liked it, always meant to get back to Anne, and here she is with The Forgotten Waltz. Check out the cover, above. A perfect statement of the book. The woman represents Gina Moynihan, the chairs her husband and her lover. She’s got a hand on each, chosen neither. That’s part of the mess she creates. I’ll follow up on the rest a bit later. First, a word about language and voice, since those are the elements that make this bo...more

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May 13, 2012 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Gathering, Enright's Booker Prize winning book, will be my next read. I am a sudden and delighted discoverer of Enright's gloriously poetic, understated prose. As we move back and forth in time inside the narrator's mind, slowly emerges a portrait of a certain set of Irish people in boom time and in bust. The narrator remembers her first glimpse of the man who would be the love of her life, (at a party where everyone was part of a couple). IN a fragmentary way, we suffer through a parent's d...more

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May 10, 2012 Kathleen Hagen added it · review of another edition

The Forgotten Waltz, by Anne Enright, Narrated by Heather O’Neill, Produced by Recorded Books, downloaded from audible.com.

Gina Moynahan is a Dublin woman with a good job, a husband, and seems to be happy. But she starts having an affair with her neighbor, Sean Zallely, also married and with a little girl. The two knew each other for quite a while before the affair started. And it went along for some time without anyone noticing, but finally, gossip being what it is, people found out. Gina’s mot...more

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May 06, 2012 Dana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This very disturbing and gloriously written novel, by Anne Enright, takes place in Ireland, but a modern day Ireland which, other than the places which are named, could just as easily be modern America. The setting is irrelevant, except that it is a middle/upper middle class venue filled with intelligent, professional characters rather than one of poverty or extreme wealth. The Forgotten Waltz is the story of an affair between Sean Vallely, a married man, and Gina (I am not sure we know her last...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anne Enright, author of the 2007 Booker Prize winner, The Gathering, has written a new novel called The Forgotten Waltz. It is told from the point of view of Gina Moynihan who has a lust-filled affair with a married man, Sean Vallely. They first meet at a garden party hosted by Anne's sister Fiona, and progresses from there. At first there are innocent (and not so innocent) looks, and then on a business trip in Switzerland, the affair begins in earnest.

When Gina first sees Sean at Fiona's garden...more Anne Enright, author of the 2007 Booker Prize winner, The Gathering, has written a new novel called The Forgotten Waltz. It is told from the point of view of Gina Moynihan who has a lust-filled affair with a married man, Sean Vallely. They first meet at a garden party hosted by Anne's sister Fiona, and progresses from there. At first there are innocent (and not so innocent) looks, and then on a business trip in Switzerland, the affair begins in earnest.

When Gina first sees Sean at Fiona's garden party, she is happily married to her husband, Conor. There are no outward signs that there is trouble in the marriage and, as I read this book, I did not see the marriage and any shortcomings as a reason for the affair. Gina saw Sean, felt lust, and let her impulses prevail. Sean is married and has a child named Evie who, at the time that Gina first meets Sean, is four years old.

The novel is not told in any particular linear order. It is related to the reader in fragments of memory that Gina recalls. "So don't ask me when this happened or that happened. Before or after seems beside the point. As far as I was concerned, they were happening all along."

Always playing a key role is Evie, Sean's daughter. When she is five she begins to have childhood seizures that continue for many years. Annette, Sean's wife, is vigilant about Evie's medical care and appears not to notice that Sean is otherwise preoccupied with Gina. Evie, however, has the sense that something is happening in her home that is not quite normal. At one point, she even sees Sean and Gina kissing on the stairs of her home.

The novel takes place at the start of Ireland's economic boom in the nineties and progresses to the depressions that hits later on. As the novel starts, people are making more money than they know what to do with, buying second homes with ocean views and dropping hints about all the money that they have. By the time the novel ends, people are lucky just to have jobs. Their houses have been on the market for a very long time and no one is buying. The market has seen a real depression.

Gina tells the whole story in the first person and we go along with her as she does her best to remember what happened between her and Sean. She strongly believes that Evie is responsible for her and Sean's love. Evie's watchful eyes, times of poor health, and perspicacious study of her father and his lover mark an ever-present omen for Gina.

As the affair progresses, Gina finds out that she is not the first person Sean has been unfaithful with. There was a young woman in his office, many years ago, that Sean had courted and loved. Gina is careful not to ask Sean too many questions about this as she wants to see their relationship as special and romantic, which it is, but as life goes, it is not that unique. "Every normal thing he said reminded me that we were not normal. That we were only normal for the twelve foot by fourteen foot of a hotel room. Outside, in the open air, we would evaporate."

During the course of the affair, Gina deals with the death of her beloved mother, Joan, her estrangement from her sister, Fiona, and the breakdown of her marriage to Conor. She tries to see these events in relationship to the affair but they all have a full life separate from her love for Sean.

It takes Sean a long time to leave his wife, time that Gina waits for him in agony and pain. She had hoped they'd be together by Christmas but as April comes around, Sean is just beginning to move into Gina's home. "It was delicate business, being the Not Wife."

The affair takes on a triangular pattern - Sean, Gina and Evie. "I said it to Sean once - I said, if it had not been for Evie, we would not be together - and he looked at me as if I had blasphemed." "As far as he is concerned, there is no cause; he arrived in my life as though lifted and pushed by a swell of the sea."

The book is filled with musical metaphors and reads poetically. Enright is a master of the inner mind and our deepest thoughts. She not only tells a story but she captures lives, sparing no moment, no movement and no detail. Nothing is too small for her to notice and reflect on. In fact, it is the small things that make up the big deeds that change our lives from one second to the next.
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Feb 19, 2012 Jennifer Steil rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I expected to love this book, given Anne Enright's reputation and my love for all things Irish. But it left me cold. It's not the adultery that galled me, but how it was carried out and presented. Even after finishing the book I found the main character, Gina, elusive. She never came to life for me as a real, whole person. I can't imagine what her conversation is like, how she walks, what she likes to eat, or even what she does at her job, which is only vaguely explained. I couldn't even really...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Bellezza rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011

Saying that this novel is about an affair is like saying a home is about bricks and glass. That's true enough, in a way, but it's not getting any where near the substance within. I have never read writing like that of Anne Enright's. It is powerful, and funny, and thought provoking all at the same time. I read ever so slowly to capture every phrase and reread sentences or whole paragraphs over again to contemplate their meaning which resonated deeply within me. She'll write something profound i...more

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Dec 01, 2011 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are two ways to read Anne Enright’s novel “The Forgotten Waltz”: The first, as a sexy page-turner filled with feigned nonchalance between instances of passionate hotel room hopping; The second, as one woman walking into the middle of life-as-she-knows-it with dynamite stuffed into her Wonder Bra.

The premise is that Gina Moynihan is going to meet up with the daughter of her lover. Along the way she considers the events of the past few years that have brought her to this point, starting wit...more There are two ways to read Anne Enright’s novel “The Forgotten Waltz”: The first, as a sexy page-turner filled with feigned nonchalance between instances of passionate hotel room hopping; The second, as one woman walking into the middle of life-as-she-knows-it with dynamite stuffed into her Wonder Bra.

The premise is that Gina Moynihan is going to meet up with the daughter of her lover. Along the way she considers the events of the past few years that have brought her to this point, starting with the first time she saw Sean Vallely standing by a fence at a party. Him: her sister’s neighbor, middle aged, married to an unspectacular woman with a daughter who is quietly rumored to have something wrong with her. Gina: fresh from a trip to Australia with the boyfriend who will become her husband, hiding deep in the yard because her niece and nephew have never seen someone smoke a cigarette. It’s an insignificant moment at the time, but one that Gina will revisit and paint with poetry once things ramp up between the two a few years later.

Before that, though, there is a one-night stand. Gina and Sean end up at the same out-of-town conference, part of a crew of party people who move seamlessly from all-business to afterbar. It’s a poorly conceived drunk idea, last two standing, that lands them in bed playing bumbley fumbley. Then they ignore each other. Gina comes loathe him -- but it’s not a real loathing, and it feels a lot like watching a babysitter in a horror movie take a flashlight into the basement to check out a noise. Of course it happens again. He’s been brought in to her company as a consultant, which can only mean its a matter of time before one stands too close to the other or her shirt drops a notch and they’re busting loose toward a hotel near the airport.

The truth is, Sean’s kind of a creep, though not in an obvious way. A real charmer. Has he done this before? Definitely. It’s in the gifts he gives her: perfume, a scarf. Generic tokens. Once with a 22-year-old, although they encounter a power suit bulldog who seems to have a curious familiarity with him, too. Does his wife know? She would say no, but the truth is probably more layered. She might just be choosing not to know. That shrapnel from Gina’s life? Good guy. Maybe a little too into the whole online scene.

It’s a juicy little story, it is, but it tugs at the eye roller and the inner “Aw, grow up already. Figure it out.” Eyes covered, begging Gina “DO NOT GO INTO THE BASEMENT!” A lot of books end and you assume that is how it ends. Not so much “And they lived happily ever after” as “I’m satisfied where you people are right now in your lives, and I trust if I checked back in ten years you would still be doing just fine.” Not so much with this one. This one gets even messier when the book closes. (less)

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Oct 28, 2011 Chuck Erion rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

David Lodge’s fictional biography of H.G.Wells, and Anne Enright’s latest novel The Forgotten Waltz, both published in May, share a theme: the emotional politics of marital affairs. A Man of Parts (Random House UK, $34.95) is a 560-page life of HG, the self-made novelist, social reformer, and Free Love advocate. David Lodge is a British novelist with some 14 novels to his credit, many of them parodies of the academic life. He also has penned ten works of essays and literary criticism, but A Man...more David Lodge’s fictional biography of H.G.Wells, and Anne Enright’s latest novel The Forgotten Waltz, both published in May, share a theme: the emotional politics of marital affairs. A Man of Parts (Random House UK, $34.95) is a 560-page life of HG, the self-made novelist, social reformer, and Free Love advocate. David Lodge is a British novelist with some 14 novels to his credit, many of them parodies of the academic life. He also has penned ten works of essays and literary criticism, but A Man of Parts may be his biggest opus.
Wells (1866-1944) was similarly prolific, in both fiction and essays. Best-known for his science fictions (War of the Worlds, The Time Machine), he authored a steady output that kept him on the bestseller lists and financed an affluent lifestyle that was a far cry from the poverty of his childhood. His two-volume Experiment in Autobiography was released in 1934, but Wells also recorded a third volume that he insisted not be published until he and all the women listed in the book had died. HG Wells in Love came out in 1968 and it is this sexual odyssey that Lodge is mining in A Man of Parts. In a unique twist, after each narrative chapter, Lodge “interviews” Wells, venting some criticism of his subject’s egotism and the emotional damage his series of affairs caused.
It was Wells’ second wife, Catherine, a name he changed to Jane, who accepted his need for extramarital relationships both short- and long-term. Free Love was advocated by the Fabian Society, a group of social reformers headed by G.B. Shaw and Edward Pease, whose wife was the suffragette Emily Pankhurst , and Hubert Bland whose wife was the children’s writer, Edith Nesbit. (I recently took my grandson to see Nesbit’s The Railway Children in Toronto.) Wells had extended affairs with the Blands’ and with the Pease’s daughters. The friction this sparked with the Fabians eventually led to Wells’ resignation from the group. While the Fabians promoted women’s right to the vote, they were unwilling to give up their Victorian standards regarding the sanctity of marriage. Wells was later attracted to the young journalist, Rebecca West, among several other lovers and railed against those who criticised his polygamous position with two families: his two sons with Jane, and his new son with Rebecca.
Have attitudes regarding monogamy changed much in the century since Wells’ heyday? I think that Anne Enright’s latest novel suggest they have not. The Forgotten Waltz (McClelland & Stewart, $29.99) takes place in 2009 Ireland, just as the Green Tiger economic bubble is losing its affluence-for-everyone helium. It is a woman’s memoir of desire, from the first tryst with Sean in a Dublin hotel, to his divorce and moving into her late mother’s home as they wait to sell it in a market gone soft. As in A Man of Parts, it is children that prove the greatest challenge to the affair. Sean’s daughter, Evie, has epilepsy, with her first seizure corresponding to the start of the extramarital liaison.
Enright’s The Gathering, about several siblings brought together by their mother’s funeral, won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. She is a master at weaving telling details into a tale where passion overrides the boredom of the status quo. Social anthropologists argue whether homo sapiens’ inherent nature is monogamous or polygamous. What Enright and Lodge explore is the often-overwhelming challenges and emotional fallout of the affair on both its partners and their “exes” and children. Both make clear that, despite the consequences, affairs of the heart are incurable and remain core to their subjects’ humanity.
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Oct 21, 2011 Felicity rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm sure I have read Anne Enright's "The Gathering" which won the Booker Prize back in 2007. But, if so, I can't remember much about it...unfortunately. If I could remember it, I might have some comparison for "The Gathering" which has been much-hyped as Enright's first post-Booker novel. I think any author would be buried under the weight of such expectations. It's probably just as well that it took Julian Barnes four shots to win the Booker...he's been working up to it.

I don't know if I liked...more

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Oct 18, 2011 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of Irish writers

Shelves: 21st-century-fiction

I spent the summer reading plenty of novels by smart, young, cutting-edge writers. It was fun and exhilarating. But as fall approached and the days grew shorter, it felt appropriate to read a novel about adultery and its consequences by a seasoned author who knows the pathways of the heart.

The Forgotten Waltz, set in and around Dublin, encompasses those incredible years when Ireland, after all its sad centuries of impoverished outsider status, finally got to be a player in the mad scramble for w...more I spent the summer reading plenty of novels by smart, young, cutting-edge writers. It was fun and exhilarating. But as fall approached and the days grew shorter, it felt appropriate to read a novel about adultery and its consequences by a seasoned author who knows the pathways of the heart.

The Forgotten Waltz, set in and around Dublin, encompasses those incredible years when Ireland, after all its sad centuries of impoverished outsider status, finally got to be a player in the mad scramble for wealth that characterized the early years of the millennium. Gina Moynihan, recently married career woman, feeling she can have any kind of life, house, job, or husband that she wants, falls in love with an older married man over a period of five years and infrequent encounters.

At first it is simply lust, drunken indulgence, meeting Sean Vallely in hotel rooms. The kissing is more transporting than the actual sex; the sneaking around more exciting than the man himself. In what Gina suspects is an attempt by Sean's wife to check out the competition, she receives an invitation to the Vallely's annual New Year's Day party. Something about the encounter with her lover's wife and daughter Evie raises a dalliance into a full-blown affair. An almost innocent air of just fooling around becomes the messy business of adultery.

The novel begins in 2009, after all the dirty deeds have broken up two marriages. Gina, who narrates her own tale, is looking back in an effort to understand how she came to be living in her deceased mother's house with a man who now seems rather ordinary. She tells us, "I can't be too bothered here with chronology. The idea that if you tell it, one thing after another, then everything will make sense. It doesn't make sense." The style of Enright's discerning look at many types of love is in tune with the above quotation. Gina looks back over the past seven years like someone awaking from a dream or coming out of an obsession. It does not all make sense, even to the reader.

In the first sentence of the preface we learn that, "If it hadn't been for the child then none of this might have happened, but the fact that a child was involved made everything that much harder to forgive." We also learn that there was something peculiar about this child, Evie. That preface is an almost too subtle hint that Evie is a central and important character, but not until the very end of the novel do we find out why and how.

What did Gina want? What did Sean want? It is not clear and I found myself fascinated and puzzled but unable to stop thinking about those questions until I had found my own answers several hours after turning the last page. What appears to be a story of adultery has a secret layer. In her Booker Prize winning novel, The Gathering, Anne Enright told a dark and shameful family saga. The Forgotten Waltz is perhaps lighter, but it is nonetheless an examination of Irish family life as it plays out in our fractured contemporary world.(less)

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Oct 14, 2011 Samantha rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had trouble deciding what I thought about this book. I changed my rating three times before even starting to write the review. This is a book about rationalizations. I'm not one to moralize book characters. After all, I'm along for the journey, to vicariously experience other people's lives. I feel like I'm missing out on something vital to the experience of the book if I judge a character for her decisions and choices. But I couldn't help but hate Gina a little bit for being both selfish and...more I had trouble deciding what I thought about this book. I changed my rating three times before even starting to write the review. This is a book about rationalizations. I'm not one to moralize book characters. After all, I'm along for the journey, to vicariously experience other people's lives. I feel like I'm missing out on something vital to the experience of the book if I judge a character for her decisions and choices. But I couldn't help but hate Gina a little bit for being both selfish and overwhelmingling self-deluding.

My dislike of the main character may have clouded my ability to judge the book objectively, so I don't want to dwell on her too much. The truth is, she's a well written character, and sympathetic, in the sense that I understood her and her reactions to situations. I just thought she was sort of an awful person. Throughout the book she tries to convince herself that she loves Sean. It becomes a constant refrain, because she wants to believe that, if she hurt Conor and Fiona and Aileen and Evie in the pursuit of true love, then all can be forgiven. She knows this is untrue: she neither truly loves Sean, nor does he love her. She can't admit that it's all been a misguided quest for adventure, an attempt to infuse excitement (the kind she experienced in Australia) into her suburban life.

I disliked her intensely.

But that doesn't mean that I disliked the book. In fact, I think it points to very skillful writing on Enright's part. She was able to a create a character so flawed and unlikeable, but in whom the reader is still invested, because she's a good writer.

The book itself is mesmerizing. Enright has a lyrical, highly evocative quality to her prose. She (usually) flows between time periods effortlessly, and, with a few words, gives deep insight into characters who only appear at the margins of the story. She also manages to avoid many, if not all, of the banalities of "women's fiction," which must have been difficult, considering the subject matter (adultery and childhood epilepsy, not to mention thinly disguised alcoholism).

The backdrop of the Irish boom and bust of the mid-2000s was a clever foil for Gina. During the boom years, the upper middle class were smugly drinking their expensive wine, enjoying their beach homes, and replacing the tile in their kitchens. Gina was smugly enjoying her affair with Sean, only mildly considering the consequences, and acting as though the affair were something due her.

After the bust, the no-longer-upper middle class are grimly trying to sell their beach homes, and quietly trying to pretend they're not losing money on deals or out of work altogether. After the affair is discovered, Gina is trying to find comfort in her rationalizations until finally, quietly, she admits the truth: that Sean had several affairs or quasi-affairs before her. That they had little to do with his family situation. And that he is just as remote and unreachable to her now as he was when still married.

Unfortunately, as skillfully as Enright weaves together the flashbacks that tell the story of Gina's affair, her scattered attempts to ground the splot in the present fall flat, disrupting an otherwise beautiful narrative. The use of the present tense for these scenes is awkward, and while the transitions from present to past are done well, the transitions from the past back to the present can sometimes feel like a lead weight. Part II was particularly clunky and difficult to read. Though, considering the subject and plot of Part II, and the ending of Part I, the abrupt transitions may have been an intentional tool to bring the reader back to reality, in all its cold, unforgiving gloom. Maybe.

Overall, a beautiful but flawed book.(less)

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Jul 26, 2011 Ian Young added it · review of another edition

The Forgotten Waltz is the story of an affair, told in detail from the perspective of one of the participants, Gina Moynihan. “I met him in my sister’s garden in Enniskerry” she tells us, in the first sentence of chapter one. And already we know that a child is involved and will play a key role, because Evie is the subject of the preface. So the key building blocks are in place from the very beginning, and we know in general terms how the book will end. However, in this book it is the journey th...more The Forgotten Waltz is the story of an affair, told in detail from the perspective of one of the participants, Gina Moynihan. “I met him in my sister’s garden in Enniskerry” she tells us, in the first sentence of chapter one. And already we know that a child is involved and will play a key role, because Evie is the subject of the preface. So the key building blocks are in place from the very beginning, and we know in general terms how the book will end. However, in this book it is the journey that matters at least as much the destination.

The background for the novel is suburban Dublin towards the peak of the Celtic Tiger economy, and during the beginning of the property collapse. There are parallels with the rise and decline of the central relationships in the book, both the marriages and, perhaps, the affair. I know Dublin well, and the places and attitudes are convincingly portrayed. Some scenes are very funny, alive with a dark humour, but in the main this is a serious book. The quality of the writing is superb, and the enjoyment lies in the detail, since from the outset we know what will happen.

Anne Enright’s skill lies in how she leads us through the journey, so that we come to know Gina and understand her. When she first meets Sean, we experience the moment with her and the tiny lurch in the fabric of her universe as he turns round and glances at her. As their relationship develops, we see all of its ups and downs, its highpoints and low points, from Gina’s perspective. I found this very convincing – Gina understands herself well and is an astute observer. The other characters are portrayed through Gina’s eyes, and where she has doubts or uncertainties about them, we experience that as well. All that she can hold on to is that she loves Sean, although at times she does not seem to like him very much – she cannot really be sure that he loves her. Gina does not dislike her own husband, or Sean’s wife, but her passion for Sean overrides all of her other concerns.

Other family relationships are significant but secondary. During the novel, Gina’s mother dies and she recalls her relationship with her father. Sean’s daughter, Evie, who we know from the start is a significant player in events, is initially a somewhat mysterious figure. Her history unfolds as the book progresses, and we understand her importance to Sean and his wife. Towards the end, the focus shifts to Gina and Evie, mainly positive but with a strong minor undercurrent as Dublin suffocates in a blanket of snow. Perhaps the future of the affair will depend most crucially on Evie.

The perspective and the emphasis on the subtle emotional elements of this story are intensely female. Enright seems completely in command of her material. I have read all of her earlier books, and she now seems a more relaxed and mature writer (almost certainly helped by her previous novel, The Gathering, winning the Booker Prize). I enjoyed this book more that I enjoyed The Gathering – it is a deceptively simple story, which succeeded in getting under my skin, emotionally rich and darkly funny.
(less)

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Jun 07, 2011 Yellowoasis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

I love Anne Enright’s writing, and having heard her speak in a radio interview, the voice in her books always sounds like her voice in my head. She used a brilliant expression about the time setting of her book at the end of the Irish boom: “The bubble had burst but we hadn’t yet heard the pop.” That’s exactly what this book describes, as the characters enjoy the boom years, spending up large on homes (they’d call it ‘property’) and Krug, dashing off to Poland on business. The affair is a symbol...more

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May 31, 2011 Bobbi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've just finished the ARC of this wonderful new novel by the author of "The Gathering." (For which she won the Man Booker Prize.) I had the pleasure of hearing Anne Enright speak recently at Book Expo America, and I am thrilled that her delightful Irish voice comes through loud and clear in this book. It's a recollection by Gina Moynihan, a thirty-something Dubliner, about her life and loves. Seemingly happily married, she nevertheless begins an affair with a married neighbor of her sister's, a...more

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May 30, 2011 Christine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fill a bucket with water; dash in some Ireland, some mild alcoholism, some men, a heaping spoonful of adulterous sex, two neglectful fathers and two cups of fragmented conversations; sprinkle the name Seán liberally into the brew. Stir. Abandon chronology and good sense: hey presto, The Forgotten Waltz. Badly in need of some ruthless editing, a fortnight of copy-pasting and a serious reconsideration of the protagonist’s actual net worth, and oh, the audacity of taking first-person narrative to s...more Fill a bucket with water; dash in some Ireland, some mild alcoholism, some men, a heaping spoonful of adulterous sex, two neglectful fathers and two cups of fragmented conversations; sprinkle the name Seán liberally into the brew. Stir. Abandon chronology and good sense: hey presto, The Forgotten Waltz. Badly in need of some ruthless editing, a fortnight of copy-pasting and a serious reconsideration of the protagonist’s actual net worth, and oh, the audacity of taking first-person narrative to such banal frontiers.. what would be left if we were to ring up Anne’s editor and convince her to call the whole thing off and bring out the scissors? Not much. Some truisms and keen observations do not a novel make.

Yes, I know she did it on purpose but that doesn’t make it any more excusable – the chronology and the fragmentation and nebulous allusions, I mean. You can’t just decide “I want to write a novel about adultery from the view of the adulteress and by the way, she really loves him and furthermore [cue sinister, baffling music] he’s got this daughter and [creepier music] she’s different” without coming up with some serious material. You can’t just glance over stuff like that, man! And I don’t know the name for the technique where you introduce something of gravity, drop it like a lead balloon and then don’t come back to it for 200 pages, and the book’s only 260 pages long. I don’t like that at all, and I’m sure it has a very academic, literary term to go along with it. Somebody in an argyle sweater, leave it in the comments please.

Let me give some credit where credit is due. I think Ms. Enright was going somewhere with Seán, irresistible married scoundrel to her unquantifiable, immodest, annoying protagonist Gina, also married. (She wasn’t going anywhere with Gina and did nothing to bring her to life, so listening to her opine and declare her love and frustration for 260 pages is pure torture). Enright, as an author, has charming scoundrels and dead marriages and the Dublin suburbs in the bag. She could have gone places with those bags. But didn’t. It’s a thing, actually, with this book: she never actually describes anything, yet manages to evoke scenery, places, and roads that I’m sure I’d love to visit. Everything is held back. Why? At one point, I think she even abandoned Gina in the middle of the road in her exasperating despair and never rescued her from that plot point. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe Gina is actually dead for the last 1/4 of the book! Spooky. Better bring that up at the book club discussion group. Also, why is it called The Forgotten Waltz? As you will no doubt recall, happening upon the titular line in a book is one of my most favorite things, known to elicit much dignified hand-clapping and even a whispered cheer from my lips. Well, no one waltzes. There’s some dancing, yes, but very little. There is a scene after Gina and Seán get it on in a hotel room when she says something or other about the music of their love still hanging forgotten in the air behind the door. Was that it? Was that a clue? Gosh, I hope not.

Wait! Maybe she didn’t mean for that to be the title. Maybe she jotted down “The Forgotten Waltz” as one of the things she neglected to put in the book. Furthermore, did I add yet that all the chapters are song titles? “There Will Be Peace in the Valley” “Kiss Me Honey, Honey Kiss Me” “Toora Loora Loora” “Money (That’s What I Want)” … gimmicks. I really can’t abide gimmicks. Gimmicks belong in flyers for flea markets and used car lots and butcher shop sales. Not books!

What should the title of this book be then? Wait, What? The Story of Gina and Seán, Sitting in a Rowan Tree. That’s your title right there. The book is in there somewhere, with all the worthless, philandering, bitter Terenurers. But do we really want to read it?

So again, Enright’s a fine enough writer who seems to have gotten a case of the hiccups. Clairvoyant observations appear here and again and the disappointing boat of characters is confusedly buoyed on a current of deep understanding and sympathy: why Enright never taps into it is a mystery. I felt sorry for the huge swing and miss this ended up being. I haven’t read The Gathering and so I haven’t any idea what did or did not justify it receiving the Man Booker Prize. She said at a talk I attended that she wrote this as a “gift” to her parents; fascinating, as I couldn’t imagine writing a book about something like this for my parents, let alone wanting them to read it. She also talked about the strangeness of adapting to her newfound success after more than a decade of dedicated writing. I’m pretty sure The Forgotten Waltz wouldn’t have come from the pen of someone not mired in the trappings of success; once success and quality are presumed, succeed you will not and quality will rot. I try to imagine someone without a Man Booker prize under her belt getting this published and I am left shaking my head.

An advance copy was provided by the publisher. The release date is October 2011.(less)

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