The visitor

Following the death of her mother, twenty-two-year-old Anastasia King leaves Paris to return to Dublin. In the time that she has been away, her estranged father has died. On arriving to her family home, Anastasia is met by her paternal grandmother, who, filled with bitterness and spite, has determined never to forgive Anastasia for fleeing with her mother to Paris. As her days fill up with little humiliations, it becomes clear that, while Anastasia thinks she has come home to stay, for the vengeful Mrs King she is an unwelcome visitor. Written while Brennan was still in her twenties, this novella is a masterpiece of compression, a terse and haunting account of the personal and political factors that impinge on a young woman’s freedom. Presented here with a new introduction by Lynne Tillman, The Visitor seals Maeve Brennan’s reputation as one of the twentieth century’s finest writers, and one of the most unflinching documentarians of the human heart.