Attention

Anne Enright might just be Ireland’s greatest living writer… This autumn she’s publishing a collection of essays… I’m rereading her novels in anticipation

Laura Hackett, The Times, *Autumn Picks of 2025*

With all its incisiveness, wit and brilliant sanity, Anne Enright's Attention provides a glorious antidote to the mad, sad world

Eimear McBride

The provocative, wise, compassionate turns her writing takes, always so alert, so attuned, so alive

Lucy Caldwell

Anne Enright is a dazzling novelist…and an insightful essay writer… Attention confirms the intelligence, compassion and humour of the mind behind the novels

Independent

In Attention you can experience the energy of her essayistic mind, whirring with ideas of justice, truth and imagination. It’s a remarkable place to be

Sunday Times

Anne Enright’s essays are a joy to read: incisive, wise, often humorous, they are explorations of the way we live in the world today. I turned down so many page-corners as I read that I now cannot shut my copy of the book.

Maggie O'Farrell

What a pleasure this book is… I have admired Enright’s writing for a long time, but it struck me that she is one of the best essayists alive, as well as one of the best novelists, and ought to get more recognition for the former

Megan Nolan, Observer

My feeling reading this collection is that each precious line needs going over twice. First for the sound and shape of the words, the second for their meaning… [Enright] write[s] like a sharp, funny fallen angel and we will pay attention

Guardian

Enright’s writing has a sense of searching, as though you are thinking along with her? – a style that renders her insights no less brilliantly sharp

Observer, *Books of the Year*

It was hard to select my favourite essays of 2025…the standout publication was Attention… [which] confirms the intelligence, compassion and humour of the mind behind the novels

Independent, *Books of the Year*

My non-fiction book of the year is Anne Enright’s peerlessly witty, insightful and generous essay collection, Attention. Her reflections on Angela Carter, Helen Garner and Toni Morrison are second to none, but her brilliant analysis of the Alice Munro revelations is the jewel in the crown.

Frances Wilson, New Statesman

The title word Attention reads as both an imperative and a manifesto. It is a subject Enright writes about delightfully… she teaches us the value of looking very, very carefully

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