Editorial Content for Attention: Writing on Life, Art, and the World

In an age when “soft” journalism, such as arts reviews, book reporting and topical essays, is becoming an endangered species, it’s reassuring to know that there are still magazines and newspapers (whether in print or online) that not only give space to them, but value what they offer.

It’s in spaces like that where I’ve encountered and relished the unique rhythm and depth of Anne Enright’s essays. After three decades and a dozen fiction and nonfiction books, Ireland’s celebrated Booker Prize-winning author (finally!) has collected some of her best shorter pieces in ATTENTION: Writing on Life, Art, and the World.

Between the covers are 24 essays ranging from 2007 to 2025, divided into three sections: “Voices,” “Bodies” and “Time” --- single-word titles that expand into a universe of meaning and subtle surprises, just like the almost sacramental thread of James Joyce that winds engagingly through every sentence.

"Throughout ATTENTION, I was continually drawn to Enright’s paradoxical skill of creating gentle, reflective and uncluttered prose. The astonishing amount of detail seems entirely incongruous with the movement of her ideas."

The 10 titles gathered under “Voices” are mainly Enright’s commentaries and personal musings on writers who grew and flourished in the same rich Irish soil, with the notable and discerning inclusion of Canada’s late Alice Munro, whose short stories I devoured in university and far beyond.

Munro has become a difficult subject, ever since the revelation of sexual abuse of a daughter by her partner and her adamant silence, even to the victim. Enright doesn’t shy away from the moral challenge of relating to incredibly good fellow writers who are found to be perpetrators or silently complicit in incredibly bad things (Munro is not the only one with whom she comes to terms).

Without sanctioning, apologizing or defending their shadowed legacies in any way, Enright reveals the good and bad side by side. If the writing was good before, it is still good after. At various points throughout ATTENTION, Enright --- a conscious atheist who was raised Catholic --- reminds us that we are all imperfect. And she’s looking at herself in the same mirror. This everyday knowledge of imperfection seems to fuel her creativity, giving readers a subtle, non-performative tone, embodying an ease that hides meticulous art.

In the six essays of “Bodies,” Enright delves into some of the deeper threads of Ireland’s complicated web of church, state and social understandings about sex. The historical façade blurs realities around reproduction, feminine agency, political will, shaming, anonymous procreation, and the coded language still used about the hard facts of children conceived outside of marriage.

In this challenging area, ATTENTION gives us some of Enright’s most precise and unflinching, yet compassionate, observations of contemporary reality, both in so-called “real life” and in fiction. There is no haranguing, pomposity or elevated assumption in her reflections on subjects such as Ireland’s referendum on abortion reform, how women are treated by the medical profession, or how to parse and define what is really meant by sexual “consent” in a victim’s context. Her informed, critical and discerning approach is refreshing, lucid and much needed.

The concluding section, “Time,” is a rich distillation of nostalgic, poignant and memorable recollections from Enright’s own life and career, which are not always inextricably joined. Among these eight essays (and I wish she’d chosen a few more), she offers an almost-poetic tribute to Dublin, a city that truly birthed her literary self; anecdotes about traveling with her husband (they have different emotional and perceptive speeds); how children should encounter religion; and more.

The welcome surprises in this section include a light yet incisive recollection of visiting Canada, particularly British Columbia. The experience left a profound influence on Enright's relationship with nature, climate, the environment, and the humans drawn to live in it and with it.

Throughout ATTENTION, I was continually drawn to Enright’s paradoxical skill of creating gentle, reflective and uncluttered prose. The astonishing amount of detail seems entirely incongruous with the movement of her ideas.

Yes indeed, I paid attention.