Even though the author of this collection has almost the same name as my my mother, she's not related to me, at least not that I know of. I'd love if she was, because it's great to have a genius in the family, and she shows signs of being one with these beatifully weighted stories. There's a purity about them that sets them apart from the experimentalism and Ultra-naturalism that seem to dominate the form these days, a characteristically Irish love of language, and a simultaneous feeling for and detatchment from her characters that is really endearing. She reminds me more than anything else of Vermeer's portrait of a young girl, which seems to capture a fleeting moment that reveals so much about both the artist and their subject.

A Dublin bookshop offered this gem up to me when I was visiting Ireland in the early 90's, and probably a year has not gone by since 1991 when I haven't reread The Portable Virgin. It's smart, edgy, and hysterically funny. It's also an entirely original take on what contemporary Irish consciousness is like. Every friend to whom I've lent my dog-eared copy threatens to steal the book from me. Sadly, it's out of print, but an American publisher would be wise to print up another 50,000 copies.

I found this book very surreal and often times strange. It starts out with Stephen the angel showing up on Grace's doorstep. At times I'd get lost going back and forth from Grace's home life and her trying to accustom to Stephen's presence. Throwing herself into her job in TV broadcasting at a weekly program called the LoveQuiz. Her father is going senile with Alzheimer's. Looking at Grace, she's pretty much has a good solid life.

Through most of her cynical views. She realizes she must take hold of her life and all of it's absurd turns. With Stephen's appearance he explains to Grace he (a former bridge builder who committed suicide) came back to earth to guide lost souls. Soon they both establish a household together. Visits to her parents house and the memories and pictures that are hidden from view. Reminds Grace that her father who she always knew wore a wig. From the time of her parents meeting and the later stuff. All the family reminscences. The time they first got an Aerial. The first time they got a TV. The first night viewing in 1969 with a memorable list of Irish TV programs. Do these bring back memories? Such as, Steady As She Go-Goes (on the night they landed on the moon), Apollo 11, The Riordians on Wednesday night.

The ending is subtle and fluid like the milk she trails on the road to her house. Describes it like making love or dying. Nothing really dies. To a woman it make's sense. Just as the sky is blue. Just imagine that unpredictable revelation like falling in love. Through the complex picture of family, religion, sex, love and redemption is a glowing wit and a vibrant flavor like the blue pattern of a TV screen. This book has everything from parents and love to religion and the weird oddities of life. The author probes every angle with precision. And with a penchant for a zoom lens to focus on the fluid and clever situations. I think it was quite an entertaining and a fun read.

The set-up for the plot was excellent and I loved the ending of the book but the middle was a muddle. Still, the author has a very interesting way of looking at the world and capturing it in words.

The Author's concept of this odd book had to come from the seam of her eye where the mist and the rocks blow together like the brussel spouts of yesterday's backyard tire swing. If you liked this review, you'll love the book.

This is a strange and fractured narrative of the strange and fractured lives of identical twins separated at birth. When their mother dies of a brain tumor at the time of the girls' birth, their father, Berts, decides he can take care of only one of them. Naming her Maria, he quickly donates the other one, Marie (renamed Rose), for adoption. Maria stays with Berts in Dublin, while Rose moves around the world as the adopted daughter of a British doctor and his wife.

Both girls have big problems. Maria, from her earliest years, is always asking, "What are you like?" and looking into mirrors. Sometimes violent in arguments, she sleeps around, gets stoned, attempts suicide, and suffers a nervous breakdown. She believes she "does not have a talent for life." Rose is a sadist who taunts the foster children her parents take in, goading one boy into throwing a kitten through a window and later trying to drown him. She believes there is "a hole in her head, a hole in her life." Perhaps it is that hole she is trying to fill when she goes on her shoplifting expeditions. Neither girl seems to have profited in any way from "nurture"--only nature counts here, and finding your twin, even when you don't know you are a twin, is so compelling an urge that it overwhelms any attempt to live a normal life.

With her very staccato style of short sentences, most having the subject at the beginning, Enright machine-guns her story at the reader. Her in-the-face style is emphatic and unrelenting as her narrative jumps from 1965 to 1985 to 1971, etc., from Dublin to New York to London, and from Maria to Rose and, eventually, to Anna, their mother. The story is sometimes difficult to follow, as the connections which explain some of the episodes do not occur until later in the book. Tellingly, Enright has to rely on several extreme coincidences to bring the strands of her story together and achieve some sort of resolution. The plot, such as it is, strains credulity, and if you don't agree with her thesis regarding the inborn compulsion of twins to find each other, even when they don't know they are twins, you will find this book difficult to accept.

I found this book an intriging mix of confusion and satisfaction. There were long stretches where I was utterly confused about what was going on or why the author was telling me such things interspersed with really beautiful descriptions or some other really satisfying passage that was truly enjoyable.

Do I recommend this book? Sure. Just remember that the disjointed feeling is intentional. If that sort of thing does not put you off, then you will enjoy this book for the hidden treasures it contains.

I can also say that despite the fact that Maria "sleeps around" quite a bit, it was not sexually explicit. I appreciated this. I get so sick of reading books that boldly refuse to leave any of the details to the imagination (or not as the reader chooses).