Attention explores the intersection between the personal and political, the subtleties of bodily autonomy, complex family dynamics, and the challenges of intimacy. Here we see Enright grappling with and answering these questions in nonfiction.
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'.
