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‘Under the stuff I can’t throw out is the stuff my parents couldn’t throw out’: novelist Anne Enright on the agony of clearing her family home

Would saying goodbye to every last newspaper clipping, button and book her parents had saved over decades help her mourn?In the autumn of 2023, I wanted to return to the house where I was raised in order to stand in the garage and look at some marks I made on the wall sometime towards the end of my childhood. I had discovered some tins of black and white gloss paint left on the floor and a narrow house-painting brush and I still remember, once the first dab lengthened into a line, how quickly I was lost in the pleasure of making another line and then another. I drew a woman in a long dress, maybe a kimono, with a wide belt or obi, and her hair dressed high. And when she was done, I stopped.I doubt it was any good as paintings go but it was the right shape, it was expressive. Also, no one complained. Though the garage was attached to the house it was considered my father’s domain and it seemed he wasn’t bothered by my daub on the wall, though he might have been bothered by the spoili...


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