The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
Gina Moynahan, a 32-year-old childless married woman who has an affair with a married guy who does have a child—a pretty exceptional youngster named Evie—narrates it in the first person.
As you hear Gina’s version of the story, replete with her impressions and assessments of other individuals and their motivations, the narrative is rambling, inconsistent, and loops back on itself. These opinions fluctuate like quicksilver, sometimes even during the same sentence.
The story at times reads like a cellphone chat between a lady whose time would be better spent on a therapist’s couch or overhearing one side of a conversation in a coffee shop. Gina lacks morals, is shallow and self-centred, and is driven by the trappings that money can buy.
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
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The story takes place in Dublin in the early 2000s, just before the crash of 2008. So the tale revolves around money, housing, drink, cigarettes, and lust, among other things.
And the one thing—actually, the person—on which Gina’s story depends is only briefly mentioned at the beginning and finish of her narrative. And that is Evie, Gina’s boyfriend Sean’s child. But Gina handles things in a way that is typical of her. Even if the story feels a little stale and lacks much of a storyline, the writing is excellent. I can’t help but wonder if this book is a little bit of an allegorical tale of Ireland because of the book’s topic of economic boom and bust.
This book takes place in Ireland. The egotistical “other woman” tells the account of an adulterous liaison in a poetic stream-of-consciousness manner, primarily through flashbacks that alternate between then and now and foreshadow future events. I initially believed that the appreciation was a result of the writing. I found it difficult to identify with the narrator, a 30-year-old IT worker who seems to have no moral hesitations about acting on her powerful attraction to a man who is married and has a small daughter.
Anne Enright keeps up her dreamy, almost melancholy outlook on life. As Gina quits her marriage to Conor and enters into a relationship with the mysterious Sean, we attempt to understand the core of the narrator. Gina soon learns that Sean’s daughter is his one and only love in life.
As we wait to see how the seemingly odd one-sided relationship will finish, there is the customary anticipation. Gina’s mistaken enthusiasm for a man like Sean might make us feel both sad for her and frustrated at the same time. In a jarring conclusion, Gina is left with optimism, but we are also left feeling angered by a woman’s love for such a selfish man as Sean.
