The stories in Anne Enright’s collection Yesterday's Weather are about ordinary men and women coping with the trials and tribulations of love, family and friendship. Enright, an Irish author, won the Booker Prize in 2007 for her novel The Gathering. Her stories are set around the globe, but while the locations vary and the characters have different backgrounds, they also share a similar theme: there is such loneliness in them, and the characters are often at a crossroads. Ultimately, these are hopeful tales with a heartfelt, visceral quality to them that makes them difficult to forget.
“Here’s to Love” is a beautiful story about a married 39-year-old woman living in Paris who is visited by Shay, an old boyfriend she hasn’t seen in seven years.
“Green” is about a woman who runs an organic farm in a small town, where her rivalry with a childhood friend spills into their business relationship.
In a collection that spans a career of nineteen years, it is inevitable that some of the stories will not appeal to everyone. Because most of the stories are about the challenges and issues faced by middle-aged women, it’s likely this book will appeal most to women in this stage of life. Yesterday's Weather is an exceptional book that examines the intimacies of family relationship and the drama of contemporary expectations of human nature.