An older sister roams back and forth in time, recalling various incidents from their shared childhood and youth, trying to understand the reasons for her younger sister’s death. She makes challenging statements like “anorexia was just starting then”, and “none of us liked my father, except Serena who was a little flirt from an early age”. Enright has an extraordinary ability to change focus. She describes the intimacy of a kiss where “All the sadness welled up into my face and into my lips”, and in the very next sentence she has zoomed right back out: “We went out for a while as if we hoped something good could come of it all.” The story is only eight pages long, but it becomes like a reel of cotton running away from the writer: “I am trying to stop this story, but it just won’t end.” The narrative voice is bitter as gall.
First published in Granta 75, Autumn 2001, and available to read online here [where, intriguingly or confusingly, it’s listed under Essay & Memoir – Ed.]. Collected in Taking Pictures, Jonathan Cape, 2008 and Yesterday’s Weather, Penguin 2017
A Personal Anthology 