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The Green Road  By  cover art

The Green Road

By: Anne Enright
Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins,Lloyd James,Gerard Doyle
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Publisher's summary

From internationally acclaimed, Man Booker Prize - winning author Anne Enright comes a shattering novel set in a small town on Ireland's Atlantic coast. The Green Road is a tale of family and fracture, compassion and selfishness - an audiobook about the gaps in the human heart and how we strive to fill them.

Spanning 30 years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart. As they grow up, Rosaleen's four children leave the west of Ireland for lives they could have never imagined in Dublin, New York, and Mali, West Africa. In her early old age, their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she's decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold.

A profoundly moving work about a family's desperate attempt to recover the relationships they've lost and forge the ones they never had, The Green Road is Enright's most mature, accomplished, and unforgettable novel to date.

©2015 Anne Enright (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about The Green Road

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Phenomenal

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

The female narrator was spectacular! The Irish male narrator was much weaker (3 stars), less nuance and more sing-song-y. The American voice was great also.

Any additional comments?

Nearly didn't get this because of the negative reviews. This is easily one of the best books I've read this year. Literature for adults! My previous read was "The Marriage of Opposites," which is much more highly rated on Audible, but not even in the same league as this. Wish it had been longer.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Ugh!

Not a single likable character in the entire book. The ending was so abrupt and unsatisfying that I thought I had accidentally pushed a button on my phone to make the book skip chapters. It's as if the author's keyboard froze up, so she threw her hands up and said, "Well, I guess I'm done!".

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Utterly fabulous

This representation of an Irish mother rang so true. Devastating and moving and encouraging and fucking depressing.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

But... What Happened?!

Any additional comments?

I don't know what happened at the end of the book. There were several plot lines that had just come to an important juncture and suddenly the Audible voiceover comes on and says the book is over. What happened?

The writing was good, with great character development. I honestly thought something must have happened to my download. Was someone running late on their deadline so they just stopped? Very disappointing.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Stupid ending. Not much of a story

Had good reviews but found it annoying and boring. I know that they were trying to do is write and epic novel but they fell very short. And the dumbest least satisfying ending ever!

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful

If you could sum up The Green Road in three words, what would they be?

simply enjoyable to listen to; to get into the hearts and minds, and the life uncertainties of such singular characters.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Not an uplifting book.

This book was a sad story about an Irish family's troubled relationships inside and outside the family.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Lost 10 hours of my life!`

What would have made The Green Road better?

A better story! I kept listening as I thought it would get better, which it didn't. The story was so depressing, self-absorbing and just a waste of my time. The performers did a fine job of reading, just their material was poor.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Anne Enright is awesome

Have now read 3 of Enright's books, and Actress and The Green Road are 2 of the best books I've ever read. And I read A LOT! (Conversely I returned The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch as, altho the subject is fascinating, Enright experiments with form and it's not to my mind a successful experiment.)
My only criticism of Green Road is the varying of the narrators' voices, which seems unnecessary and slightly wrong-footed, given that the actual author is clearly a woman. All through the narration the female voice still has to voice some male thoughts and dialog, and vice versa, so giving different sections to differently gendered voices really isn't logical or helpful.
But that's a minor caveat.
I'm delighted to save The Gathering for my next Christmas Eve read (our family instigated the Icelandic tradition a couple of years back). And will be pre-ordering any new work Enright publishes.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Worse book ever

This seems to be a character driven novel, but there are no characters worth caring about! Annoying wining children grow up to be f*cked up whiney adults.

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