THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ

An adulterous love affair and Ireland’s financial collapse overlap in the consistently impressive latest from the Man Booker Prize winner.

Real estate, materialism and family ties form the background to the story of an intense physical liaison between Gina Moynihan and Sean Vallely, narrated by Gina in a voice simultaneously smart and cynical, wry and all too conscious of the impact of their actions. With exquisite perception, Enright (Yesterday’s Weather, 2008, etc.) lifts a conventional story of infidelity into a larger study of connection, catastrophe and anguish, leavened by dark humor. What begins as a casual, clandestine sequence of encounters in hotel rooms between two married individuals slowly gathers momentum and, as her mother dies and the property market implodes, Gina’s drift away from the husband she has loved becomes complete. The lovers end up living in Gina’s mother’s old home, previously valued at “two and a bit” but now worth nothing as no one will buy. Not so much a love story, more a consideration of female bonds and choices—men, work, children—and the unruly depths of human emotions, Enright’s book once again brings melancholy lyricism to a domestic scenario and lifts it into another dimension.

In rueful, witty, unpredictable and compassionate prose, Enright gives expression to subtle, affecting shades of human interaction.