Novelist Flayed for Dissing Maddy's Family

Anne Enright’s recent essay about the Madeleine McCann saga might have passed with little notice, if only the Irish author hadn’t won the Man Booker Prize. Instead, newspapers raked her over the coals for a single line in which she said she “disliked the McCanns earlier than most people”—a soundbite that had some calling for a boycott of her novel.

Lost in the hubbub was the rest of the essay, the New York Times points out, which expressed shame for that impulse and rejected it. In Enright’s words, the essay was “an emotional journey full of nuance and contradiction and self-appraisal.” But, the Times points out, all her writings hinge on unresolved emotion.