The Wren, the Wren

Carmel reflects on her father, Phil. She is unsure whether she sympathizes with her father and remembers how people said she and Phil resembled each other. One event remains fixed in her mind. When she was 12, Phil ransacked their house to look for a wristwatch after he abandoned their family earlier that summer while Carmel’s mother, Terry, recovered from a mastectomy. Carmel and her older sister, Imelda, have differing recollections of how Phil confronted Terry to find the watch. Carmel recalls Phil fixing the bed to make it more comfortable for Terry. Imelda remembers Phil frisking Terry on her bed.

In an extended flashback, the narrative depicts Carmel’s life. Imelda and Carmel manage the household in their father’s absence. Imelda looks after Terry’s needs. Their aunt, Deirdre, occasionally visits and does not acknowledge Phil’s disappearance. Sometimes, Imelda’s bullying and temper forces Carmel to stay away from the house.

Terry recovers, and Imelda and Carmel go shopping for schoolbooks. Carmel is embarrassed when the shop staff highlights that the check they use to pay bears Terry’s maiden name. Later, Phil returns to discuss the checks. Carmel only realizes that her father has abandoned them when she imagines Phil carrying Terry up to her room to talk. Before Phil leaves, Carmel asks where he is. Phil doesn’t answer, only calling her “birdy” and asking for a peck.

The novel presents a poem Phil dedicated to Carmel, entitled “The Wren, The Wren.” In the poem, the speaker holds a wren in his hand. When he opens his hand, the wren escapes with such lightness that the speaker barely feels it. His pricked palms remind him of the weight of the wren’s love. The poem ends with the speaker pointing out the cold color of the sky to “[his] life, [his] daughter” (76).

In 1985, a poet named Harvey visits Terry and informs her that Phil died. They pick up Phil’s coffin at the airport from the United States and drive it to his hometown’s cemetery. The memorial is well-attended, including by a representative of the Irish president and Phil’s first girlfriend, who was the muse of an early poem entitled “The Twining.” Because Phil wrote often about their sexual exploits, the old girlfriend is well-known. Later that night, a man recounts how Phil threw a girl out onto the street while she was dressed in only a nightie. Carmel wonders if this a misrepresentation of the story she knows, where Terry came out of her room in her nightie to kiss Phil. Carmel later remembers another night when Terry refused a woman who wanted to enter their house. Carmel wonders if that woman is at the funeral.

A poet gives a eulogy for Phil, describing him as “the finest love poet of his generation” (83). Carmel looks at Phil’s second wife, an American woman.

The novel includes “Inheritance,” another of Phil’s poems that depicts the knowledge Phil accumulated throughout life, including “[t]he cost of a modern marriage” and “[a] foreign body in the bed […] [t]he locked safe of her heart” (87). The full text of Phil’s letter celebrating Carmel’s 16th birthday follows this. While visiting the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Phil saw two girls who reminded him of Imelda and Carmel. His letter describes his pilgrim soul as one that remains tethered to Carmel.

Carmel later teaches English in Florence, where she befriends teachers from England and an Italian woman named Vittoria. Later, Carmel has sex with the man Vittoria is seeing. Vittoria weeps over the betrayal, but it does little to move Carmel. Before she returns to Ireland, Carmel visits the Uffizi. She thinks of what she will miss about Italy, despite the gaudy things its beauty inspires. She attempts to write a reconciliatory note to Vittoria but gives up due to indifference. She determines that she cannot get along with most women in her life. Carmel returns home to Dun Laoghaire.

Terry’s cancer returns. Carmel teaches at a language school in Dublin. She comes home to look after Terry while Imelda is away completing doctoral studies. Terry later dies.

A lawyer tells Carmel and Imelda that discrepancies between American and Irish marriage laws caused Terry to inherit Phil’s debts, which passed onto them. Imelda inherits the house, while Carmel inherits an investment portfolio, which she must use to fulfill their mother’s inherited debts. She feels the situation disadvantages her and gets into a physical confrontation with Imelda. Carmel tells Imelda that their mother loved them equally, even though Phil only dedicated a poem to one daughter: Carmel. Imelda rebukes her, and they become estranged.

The novel presents Phil’s poem entitled “Migrations.” In the poem, birds fly over Ireland to prepare for winter. The speaker meditates on the quarrel between their mother and aunt and suggests that they are the last of their family line.

Carmel has many casual sexual relationships. When one of her friends has a baby, Carmel is bewildered that anyone would love the experience of having a child. By 27, Carmel refuses to have a man in her life, though she considers how her body is aging. After an unenjoyable sexual encounter, she decides to focus her efforts on renovating her house.

At 30, Carmel is running her own language school. She later has sex with one of her students, Edgardo. They meet and have sex again. Carmel soon becomes pregnant, and Edgardo leaves Dublin to return to his partner.

The novel presents one of Phil’s translations, “The Bird of Lagan Lough.” In the poem, a small yellow bird is a blackbird disguised by gorse flowers.

Carmel gives birth to Nell and immediately feels her newborn child recognizes her loneliness. As a newborn, Nell cries constantly, and Carmel struggles as a new mother.

Carmel falls in love with Nell as she grows older and turns stubborn. The chapter ends with a poem entitled “By Mary’s Holy Well.” In the poem, flowers grow through an animal’s ribcage, taking up the spaces where organs would be.