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The second novel to be published in America by the widely acclaimed Booker Prize-winning Irish author, a hilarious novel about parents, love, religion, and the absurdities of all of them.
Grace is a young Dubliner who works on a television show called the Love Quiz. Her father is going benignly senile and her life is fairly solid. When Stephen arrives on her doorstep, however, Grace has no idea what she’s in for. Stephen explains he is an angel, a former bridge builder who committed suicide in 1934. He has been sent back to earth (as all suicides are) to guide lost souls. Grace does not take this personally at first, but eventually she has to face the idea that things are not so easy, and that her greatest intimacy is with this supernatural creature. As Grace begins to take stock of her life and the prospect of caring enough about something to fight for it, The Wig My Father Wore takes us on a moving, surreal romp through Catholicism, parents, and the reclamation of love from the twin modern evils of cynicism and the detritus of pop culture.
“A smart and piercingly sad examination of family, roots and separation. . . . Supplementing the irresistible tale . . . is Enright’s own narrative style, which carries a poetic rhythm that bounces the reader along.” —Philadelphia Weekly
“The Wig My Father Wore is smart and smarts; it is funny but not kind . . . . Yet she gets away with it—because she writes like a devil.” —London Observer (UK)
“[The Wig My Father Wore is] weird and wonderful . . . Enright beams out a vibrant and complex pictures of religion, sex, love, and redemption united in a celestial blue, televisual glow of wit and linguistic sedition.” —Guardian (UK)
“An absurd world where the everyday is seen with the revelation afforded by an off-kilter angle, with a probing and unpredictable Flannery O’Connoresque zoom lens . . . Enright shines brightest in her capacity to get under the skin of a feeling and turn it inside out with stunningly uncompromising precision.” —Irish Times (UK)
Praise for What Are You Like?:
“Richly descriptive . . . Enright’s writing beguiles throughout.” —US Weekly
“A smart and piercingly sad examination of family, roots and separation. . . . Supplementing the irresistible tale . . . is Enright’s own narrative style, which carries a poetic rhythm that bounces the reader along.” —Philadelphia Weekly
“Enright’s story is compelling, and she writes effectively and generously.” —Publishers Weekly
“Evocative language . . . haunting . . . Enright’s lyrical language bespeaks her talent.” —Kirkus Reviews
Anne Enright is the author of eight novels, most recently The Wren, the Wren. She has been awarded the Man Booker Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. She lives in Dublin.