Anne Enright’s novel on family and betrayal

Has there ever been a novel or short story about a male writer who was a decent husband and father?

I’m thinking. I’ve been thinking ever since I finished Anne Enright’s new novel, The Wren, The Wren. It’s a story about a fictional famed Irish poet named Phil McDaragh who deserts his sick wife and two young daughters — a betrayal that reverberates into his granddaughter’s life.

Not all literary men have been cads in real life, but misbehavior makes for a more dramatic tale. That’s certainly the case with The Wren, The Wren, which, despite its precious title, is a tough, mordant story about the mess one particular Great Man of Letters leaves behind when he walks out the door.

After his death, McDaragh is lauded as “the finest love poet of his generation,” which is, of course, a pre-#MeToo generation where poet-predators grazed with impunity through writing conferences and classrooms. When Phil’s first wife, Terry, is diagnosed with breast cancer, he quickly moves on to a beautiful American student, destined to become wife #2.

Many years later, Phil’s younger daughter, Carmel, goes online and discovers a television interview with him filmed in the early 1980s, a couple of years before his death. In it, Phil reflects on his marriage to Terry, saying: “She got sick … Unfortunately, and the marriage did not survive.” Jaded Carmel sees through the theatricality of Phil’s wet-eyed TV performance, but we’re also told that Carmel thinks to herself that when her father died, “a room in her head filled with earth.”

Each chapter of The Wren, The Wren is told from the point of view a different member of the McDaragh family. Every character commands attention, but it’s Nell — Carmel’s daughter and…