What Are You Like?: A Novel

by Anne Enright

From a Man Booker Prize–winning author, a “hauntingly eloquent” novel of love, loss, family, and what a woman finds while in search of herself (The Seattle Times).
 
Born in Dublin in 1965, Maria Delahunty was raised by her grieving father after her mother died during childbirth. Two decades later, Maria is living in New York awash in longing and in love with the wrong man. Going through his things, she discovers a photograph of a little girl who looks an awful lot like her—but isn’t her. Soon Maria begins to unravel a long-buried secret more devastating than her father’s mourning, but bursting with possibility . . .
 
“Glittering . . . An Irish woman with a plate of steel somewhere between her skin and her heart . . . must travel back and forth, from childhood memories to the present, ratcheting herself up to adulthood as so many of us do.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
“So sad that you want to laugh out loud. [This novel] deals with areas of experience and patterns of living that no one else has noticed.” —Colm Tóibín, New York Times–bestselling author of Brooklyn
 
“The emotional tautness springing from bare-bones storytelling suggests Raymond Carver. The penetrative exploration of domestic relationships, especial among women, calls to mind . . . Anne Tyler.” —Newsday
 

Genres: Fiction, Irish Literature, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Family, Ireland, British Literature

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 30, 2000

About the author

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has published three volumes of stories, one book of nonfiction, and five novels. In 2015, she was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her novel The Gathering won the Man Booker Prize, and The Forgotten Waltz won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unsettling early novel - this is a rather disjointed story of twin girls separated at birth when their mother dies. The chapters switch between the protagonists in a non-linear way with occasional repetitions, which requires a bit of concentration, and as ever some of Enright's descriptions are startling and unsentimental. Probably not the best place to start with Enright but an interesting read.

[Erika]

From the first page, talking about a newborn baby: "You felt this baby was all skin, holding the soft little parcel of her insides: her fresh little kidneys, the squiggle of her guts, her quail's bones. You could eat her, that's all, her bladder like a sweet little onion and her softly sprouting brain." Nope.

[Esther · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enright won the Booker prize recently, not for this book which is one of her earlier ones, but saw it brand new in a Wilmette library booksale for $1 and thought I'd give it a go. So shes an Irish writer, this is the story of twin girls separated at birth after the death of their mother - one child is brought up by the father who remarries, the other is adopted and raised in England. Its interesting enough, but the prose is a bit willfully obtuse at times. I mean, picking up the book now and randomly opening at:
'His head was full of saxophones which turned into fish and ordinary matchboxes full of dread'. Huh?

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel, Enright's American debut, is the third Enright novel that I've read, and I think for those new to her, I'd start with Actress or The Gathering, rather than with this one. The first chapter is extraordinary - it's Dublin, 1965, and a pregnant woman is losing her mind, suffering from a brain tumor, and she will die in childbirth, leaving her husband, Berts, confused and upset and yet making practical decisions, to raise the child, Maria Delahunty. Berts remarries, Evelyn becomes her stepmother, an interesting character and a loving woman who came late to marriage and motherhood. The novel then jumps ahead in time, Maria is in her early 20s and leaves Ireland for New York where she falls in love with a married man who carries in his wallet a picture of someone who looks strangely like Maria as a 12 year old. What we learn from a lapsed nun who now works in a geriatric unit caring for the elderly and for dying nuns, in Ireland, is the truth, that the dying woman gave birth to twins - that Berts took only one of them, Maria, that the nun, then young, named the other Marie, who was renamed Rose when adopted by an English couple. Unlike Maria, Rose knows nothing about what happened to her birth mother. The best chapters are those featuring Berts and Evelyn, and I would have read much more about him and her. Far less interesting are the chapters featuring Maria or Rose, for they, too, are far less interesting characters, even as they search for each other, and it felt a little simplistic that what's been missing in their unanchored lives is each other.

[Emer Tannam · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

I had very high expectations of this book because of its author, whose other books I’ve really enjoyed, so its hard to separate those expectations from the book in its own right. Its certainly readable enough, with some lovely moments of language. But the plot is a bit of a cliche: long lost twins. I didn’t appreciate one of the last chapters on the mother, since we hadn’t heard anything from her until that point. I didn’t sympathise with any of the characters. But perhaps the real problem was the language itself. It seemed much more poetic, and self-conscious than her later, more famous books, and interfered with the story for me, rather than adding to it. For example:

“The mirror is flat and cool against her skin. Maria can see the sheet of glass between the real blood and the reflected blood. It is very thick. It is very clean and calm. She is trying to open the bottle with her teeth. She looks into her own eyes.”

So, overall it was an ok read, but disappointing.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am wavering between one and two stars on this book. It was odd, often almost surreal and very very confusing. We eventually find out it has to do with twins (the cover image shown makes that more obvious, but the one I had didn't). The twins themselves are confused, as are many of the other characters in the book.

Towards the end we hear from a character who has been dead nearly the entire book, and I feel that should have been left out of the book entirely, it didn't add anything for me.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love her style - her word choice, her non-linear writing, etc. But the story suffered here, and in the end you wound up watching the characters behind murky glass, not really caring about them much at all. I will try other Enright works, though, because I do think she has a brilliant way with words.

[Lara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a book club book and a very poor one at that. No one finished it ... need I say more.

[Shiloh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't put this book down. I just couldn't wait for it to end. It was completely confusing and miserable. I think the author wants the reader to be confused because the characters, Rose and Marie, are confused. I may end up throwing it in the trash. I haven't decided.

[Lynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Usually I appreciate different writing styles, but I couldn't get over this one. Needless to say, I could not bring myself to finish this book. It was that bad. I would give it zero stars if I could.

[Denali · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off I'm glad my library had this edition and not the other ones that may or may not have spoiler-y covers (depends on what you consider to be a spoiler). There aren't a ton of good books that I've read that put me back in the mind of my 20 year old self, so it was a bit of a surprise that this one, with its slightly off kilter narrative style and its rotating points of view, cut right to the heart. Parts were a bit tough to figure out, but I really enjoyed the way Enright used small details to unlock powerful amorphous emotions. Reading this was a bit like looking at something out of the corner of your eye and suddenly recognizing it.

[Manny]

I sometimes wonder how other people see me. Objectively, what am I like? But now, I never again need worry about this potentially disquieting question. The Goodreads algorithms, in their infinite wisdom, have provided a definitive answer.

Brilliant work, Goodreads algorithms! Cancel the next upgrade! There is no way you can improve on this. I have previously been too modest to claim that I'm basically a cross between Jan Kjærstad and Martin Amis with a soupçon of Marcel Proust, John Lanchester and J.P. Donleavy, but, well, when science asserts that it is so...

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark, fragmented, non-liner novel, lacking in those cues for who to like, not like, cheer for, or what to cheer for. The plot is outlined at the end in a non-judgmental sort of way (a bit too much really, the author sort of betrays herself). Very foreign in how dark it is and how little it tries to teach, to say.A book that leaves a taste in your mouth and a buzzing in your head. Not even sure if I liked it, but different enough to have merit.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

2000 notebook: clotted with beautiful descriptions and insights into an Irish rural childhood, brutal and tender, and, as always, something missing.
description of commuters in NY: 'their faces heavy with the night before. They seemed so real and automatic... all those brute human beings, with their muscle and lymph and bone. They walked down a street in Manhattan like a herd of bison, quiet and astonishing in the fact of themselves.'

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enright penned a convoluted story revolving around unsympathetic characters in this, one of her earlier outings. The language was forced and, frankly, in many cases, ridiculous. I normally love Ms. Enright's work; in fact I think she is brilliant. However, this book is going to be tossed in the dust bin.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a hard time reading this; it was a bit odd. Hard to tell what was really happening, what the characters were imagining to be happening, and what was total fantasy. The plot sounded good, but the story turned out not to be all that great. Meh.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a complicated and 'bitty' book but Anne Enright is a fine writer and the book was never dull. It tells the story of two sisters separated at birth and their growing up an finally meeting. Well written, realistic and contemporary.

[Lori · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story was bleak and depressing and I didn't much like any of the characters. The writing was a bit too much experimental poetry for my liking.

[Samra Muslim · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was too confusing for me, personally ... with all the back and forths in the story and vague writing !!!

[Francesca Pashby · Rating 2 out of 5]

This just overwhelmed me, there was too much writing! Felt like the story got lost in the cleverness of the description.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, just let me say that every time I read a book by Anne Enright, the same kind of thing happens. I start out enjoying it, then it starts to drag somewhat and I wonder if I'm even invested in any of the characters, and then it gets to the ending and I am glad I read through. This book is no exception.

The story does have an interesting premise: Maria is a young Irish woman living in New York City, in a doomed relationship. She finds a photograph in the man's wallet that is of her as a child - except that it's not. The little girl looks exactly like her, but Maria knows she never had those clothes or has ever visited the place where the photo was taken.

Rose is a young Irish-born woman living in London, and working as a social worker. She knows she was adopted, and begins to try and learn of her parents and biological family. Her search leads her to Ireland, to Dublin, where Maria grew up with her father Berts, and her step-mother Evelyn.

Maria's mother died in childbirth, she knows that much, but not much else. When she returns to Ireland, rather than going back to the university, she gets a job as a changing room assistant at a dress shop. One day during some quiet time, she takes a look at herself in the mirror, and suddenly sees four of herself - two real people, two reflections, identical.

As I said in the first part of this review, the beginning was interesting. The middle dragged, mostly because I was not that invested in Maria, and we get a lot more of her story than that of Rose. But the ending was pretty interesting, and for what the book was, as satisfying as I would have expected.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

My experience reading Enright's books is always a little disappointing, partly because I go in with such high expectations and she knows how to start a novel very well. It seems more often than not though that somewhere along the line something either doesn't get developed well enough or the narrative just doesn't turn the corner into the genuinely engaging and moving. That was also my experience with this novel, which poses in a dramatically interesting way the question: if you could meet your doppelganger, do you really think you would learn anything about yourself that you would not have been able to learn otherwise? Assume for the sake of the question that the resemblance is not just physical, but psychical, soulful, deep. It's an interesting thought experiment, and it might have made a really marvelous novel, but I found myself being bounced between Maria and Rose to the point of not really knowing why their stories were parallel other than the obvious (and you have to read the book to know what that means), and to the point of wondering why either of them was especially worthy of this extensive fictional treatment. For me, what might have been a very good or even excellent novel was thus reduced to merely being good.

[Ginger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my favourite Enright novel, but still very very good. I heard it as an audible book, which I really enjoyed for her other work because the narrator can read it in a much better Irish accent than the Aussie attempt I would do in my head. However, this novel moves around times and characters more than her other work, so it was easy to lose track.
It is an interesting and worthwhile story, exploring potential outcomes when an unborn baby’s health is prioritised above the pregnant mother’s - obviously very relevant in Catholic Ireland. Many other potentially taboo but everyday life for many topics explored - such as what it feels like to be the second wife of a widower, what it’s like for the nuns who run the orphanages for babies left at birth, the connections between biological twins.
Worth reading if you are an Enright fan, but just don’t go in with sky-high expectations, it’s a bit more like an Enright b-side.

[Pauline Butcher Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overwritten. Examples: ‘His head was full of saxophones that turned into fish, and ordinary matchboxes filled with dread’; ‘The cow flinched back, like a house in a nervous breakdown’; ‘her blood thickening to a viscous, wicked soup.’

This simple story of twins separated at birth is made to seem complicated by jumping around in time. Worse, it reads like a series of sketches for a writing class. For example, Maria’s scene with the lion at the zoo, Evelyn in the coffee shop, and Bertz’ shopping spree, none of which add to the story. The women, Maria, Rose and Evelyn are not only all sightly mad, they also think in the same way as does Bertz, the father who gave one of the twins away. For example, ‘I have been living in a grave, he thought, I have been living nowhere at all.’

Throughout this novel, I felt detached, not brought to care about any of them, so I’m interested to read what others thought.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a bit of a disappointment. Anne Enwright's most recent book "Actress" was a delight. "What are you like" is from twenty years ago and only takes shape after halfway. Maria is born with a twin sister, but with the death of her mother in childbirth, her father, Berts, can only cope with one. It is only later we find out what happened to the other.

There are so many switches in time and character, it takes some concentration to keep up. Even later in the book, new characters pop up. Is this the author practicing for her later better novels? The best parts follow Maria at twenty: "She always felt like someone else. She had always felt like the wrong girl".

SPOILER ALERT

The book settles down in the latter half with the alternating stories of the separated twenty year old twins Maria and Rose. It's just that we had to wait so long for coherent story telling.

[Yuliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was torn between the three and four starts. I read most of her books and they all got five starts from me. This one was just as stunning and insightful, but I thought there was too much disjointed rambling that went on for too long - I understand that both girls were lost and not interested in life; this could have been conveyed on fewer pages though. Otherwise, loved the book.

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much liked the beginning of this book when the writing was vivid but quite puzzling. As the story became clearer I liked it less. It began to seem a bit obvious.

I did lose track of who was who though, which was clearly my fault as a reader.

[Gsc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Anne Enrights books - not least for their titles. The details of this story are a joy and so it’s worth reading slowly. Not always a comfortable read. But still an excellent book.

[Patrick Harrington · Rating 4 out of 5]

hmmm some moments of greatness but a lot of meandering...not one of my favourites by this esteem author but still pretty good.

[Cris Cuthbertson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t manage this. Halfway through and I still have no idea what is going on.