Catherine Corless, who spent her own money to secure birth certificates for the unrecorded dead children of the Tuam mother and baby home.
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AE
Anne Enright
Novelist and short-story writer
Ireland · b. 1962
Arts and letters
About
Irish novelist and short-story writer whose books include The Gathering, which won the Booker Prize in 2007, The Forgotten Waltz and Actress. She was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction.
8 answers
When I was 17 I took on a class of six-year-olds for a week. When the Angelus rang at noon, they stood up in silence and I realised I was supposed to recite the prayer, which I did not know. I said: “There will be no Angelus today because of that child fidgeting at the back.”
I find it really interesting the way people are drawn to power, usually male power, sometimes in its dark mode. I wonder what they get from it. My experience of bastards is that there is very little material benefit gained from being in their company, though you feel there might be, any minute. Or you get something for a while and then the polarity switches. It’s a huge con. Trump made the mechanism clear – in this, I think he is a timely figure.
A few weeks ago, we spent a long weekend going around West Cork, and I was so happy it amazed me. My husband doesn’t always make me happy around the house, but add a road and some scenery and the combination can be very powerful.
I was not great with my mother-in-law, who was a very gentle woman. I thought she would be an uninvited part of my life for ever, but she died early and I wished I had been more open and patient.
When Kellie Harrington won gold for Ireland in the boxing at the Paris Olympics I pumped out the briny.
When I was seven I wanted to be a nun. When I was eight, I wanted to be a boy so that I could be anything I wanted. Also, of course, I wanted to be Samantha in Bewitched.
Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.
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