Covers a lot of ground ... Enright’s exhilarating mixture of analysis and autobiography compels continuous assent ... Enlivened throughout by a personal element. Enright is not in the business of being lordly or detached, and she entertainingly draws on aspects of her own experience.
My feeling reading this collection is that each precious line needs going over twice. First for the sound and shape of the words, the second for their meaning ... She is never dull, not even when discussing dinner choices on holiday, and in her acknowledgments she thanks the original editors of these pieces for insisting on 'the values of accuracy, clarity, insight and lightness'. These, then, are the terms of engagement: she will write like a sharp, funny fallen angel and we will pay attention.
Though most of the pieces have already been published elsewhere in magazines and newspapers, the publisher has done the reader a signal service by bringing the essays together under one cover ... Witheringly funny ... Deeply engaging ... Creative imagination and analytic capacity do not always pair well. The accomplished author of fiction and the successful essayist are not necessarily interchangeable positions. In this important and substantive volume, however, Enright has put her writer’s gifts at the service of a genuine, sustained 'ecstasy of attention'.
Alive with curiosity ... Enright’s cultural criticism is like catnip for writers. But corralled together and placed alongside her writing about sex, abortion reform, medical misogyny and laundries for unmarried mothers, a surprising sense of cautiousness emerges. These essays veer towards the artfully constructed, tightly written and unrevealing ... You can’t help but pay close attention as Enright masterfully squares life up as frank and true.
A unique insight into the mind of one of our most acclaimed living writers ... Every essay in this book is a treasure. Enright is by turns caustic, passionate, irreverent, and self-deprecating. Attention is, unsurprisingly, excellent but collectively these essays show us another side to a great writer and allow us to feel as if we’ve got to know her a little better.
What a pleasure this book is ... I have admired Enright's writing for a long time, but it struck me that she is one of the best essayists alive ... Enright is wonderful at bringing to life the strange Irish confluence of abundance of spirit and censorious stinginess.
She will get your attention. You may flinch; she does not ... Her prose is many-faceted – lyrical, brutal, whimsical – but always carrying the message from the heart of the writer to the very heart of the reader. Opinions are supported by deep research and lucid evidence ... The reader is constantly swept from delight to horror, from the banal to the mysterious – all within the frank, personal, sparkling idiom of this daring writer’s paintbox ... There reigns a lyrical frankness throughout, and the words hold the reader in thrall and fascination. Readers who love Enright’s fiction will surely revel in the treasures to be found in the pages of Attention.
Astute observations organized into three sections: Voices, Bodies and Time. Each essay is a testament to her keen mind and attention, an indubitable care for and curiosity about the ways a person, often a woman, moves through the world ... She writes powerfully, beautifully.
