The Wainwrights

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Set in Victorian Ireland post Great Famine and during the campaign for Irish Home Rule, "The Wainwrights" by John Mullen is a fictional work following the lives of the Wainwrights, a prominent land-owning and wealthy family. As the author sets the novel against the backdrop of unrest, uprising and dissidence, the readers are introduced to the struggles facing the Victorian era. The suffragette movement, homoerotic desire, and crime and punishment are all explored through a lens of class war, rebellion and the fight for a free Ireland. Mullen's writing style is reminiscent of the fin de siècle movement, as he depicts an era of degeneration but also the hope for a new beginning. Mullen effortlessly illustrates each character's decline, always returning to the root of where it all started; in their family home, Staddles. Through the melancholy, despair and anguish, "The Wainwrights" is a novel that touches upon the trials and tribulations of our existence and the fragility of human life.