Anne Enright: the essays in the collection give a sense of the hinterland to the preoccupations that have shaped the fictions of one of Ireland’s foremost contemporary writers. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill

Attention: Writing on Life, Art and the World Author : Anne Enright ISBN-13 : 978-1787335776 Publisher : Jonathan Cape Guideline Price : £20

The last essay in Attention begins in Venice. Anne Enright and her husband are on a cycling trip that will take them to Trieste and, from there, through Slovenia to the Croatian town of Poreč. She notes wryly their state of unpreparedness: “we are not young and fit. These days the ‘organ recital’ is followed by the ‘joint account’ as we discuss shoulders, knees, vertebrae and hips. Our itinerary is too ambitious. It always is.” By day five she is in pain everywhere but the reward is that “the pace of my bike is the pace of my noticing, and for half an hour at a time, I am in an ecstasy of attention”.

The essays in the collection capture some of that ecstasy in the admiration Enright professes for writers she particularly values such as Angela Carter, Edna O’Brien, Toni Morrison and Helen Garner. But the pain evident in the forms of wrong done to women in the name of political and social propriety is also a constant. The “attention” in the book’s title is both a comment and a warning: a comment on the expansive scope of Enright’s curiosity – her paying attention to everything from the anatomical oddity of Irish male slang (how can you “talk” shite) to Canadian preferences for patterned socks – and a warning to remain attentiv