The Gathering
by Anne Enright
|
|
| published
| 2007
by Jonathan Cape
|
| binding
| Hardcover |
| isbn
|
0224078739
(isbn13: 9780224078733)
|
| pages
| 272 |
| literary awards
| Booker Prize Winner 2007 |
| date added
|
03-20-07
|
|
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Read in April, 2008
(My full review of this book is larger than Goodreads' word-count limit. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
As a book critic, I of course try to steer clear of any information I can about a book I'm about to review, until I'm done with the book myself and have already made up my mind about what I thought; so imagine my sur...more
(My full review of this book is larger than Goodreads' word-count limit. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
As a book critic, I of course try to steer clear of any information I can about a book I'm about to review, until I'm done with the book myself and have already made up my mind about what I thought; so imagine my surprise, then, when finally checking out what others had to say about today's book in question, Anne Enright's The Gathering, and seeing so many people call it an unrelentingly dour and grim tale. Because I hadn't thought of it that way at all when actually reading it, but rather as witty, lively, and with a precise control over the English language; it wasn't until afterwards that I stopped and realized, as the Guardian UK most famously put it, that the book actually concerns an "alcoholic suicide, blank-eyed paedophile, violent father, vacant mother and irritatingly smug priest, not to mention its scenes of bad sex, self-harm, a funless wake and 5am grief-stricken howling." Oh yeah, that's right, I thought after seeing so many people mention it; and how remarkable that it never even occurred to me at the time, how remarkable that the book should be that good. No wonder it went on to win what many consider the most prestigious literary award on the planet last year. No wonder.
Because yes, ladies and gentlemen, the day is finally here; after nine months of following the contest, of tracking down and reviewing as many of the nominees as I could, the day has finally arrived to review the winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize, given out each year to what a jury of peers believes is the best novel of the last twelve months to be written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland. And indeed, Enright is in fact Irish, only the fifth Irish author in the history of the Booker to win the prize; and as you can tell from what's already been mentioned, it doesn't get much more stereotypically Irish on the surface than with The Gathering's plotline, fascinated as it is with drunken funerals, brawling families, weepy suicidal artists, and deceptively sexy pale middle-aged Gaelic women having bizarre Alice-Sebold style breakdowns. Erin go Bragh, motherf-cker!
The story of one of those huge Irish Catholic families (twelve siblings altogether, nine of whom are still alive at the time of our tale), The Gathering narratively centers around 38-year-old Veronica, somewhere in the middle of the sibling chain, a frazzled but not altogether unhappy wife and mother who nonetheless has been recently having some marital problems and drinking more than she's happy with. The reason for the eponymous gathering, then, is the drowning suicide of the black sheep of the family, the manipulative and charming loser Liam, who for years has been living right on the edge of civilized society (and his family's patience) until finally delving underneath for good while spending some time in Brighton (on the southern coast of England, a day trip from Dublin where the rest of the story takes place). Because of various complicated factors, it is Veronica who must travel to Brighton in order to identify and claim Liam's body; the book basically follows her through that journey and on through the funeral itself, peeking in her head and watching her attitudes about all the things going on, watching her fumble through her hazy memories and try to determine if there might be one single childhood event that can somehow explain how Liam eventually came to be.
In fact, I find it a fortuitous coincidence that I just happened to read The Gathering in the same exact week I read Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway for the first time as well; because when all is said and done, both authors are basically attempting the same thing, to let us literally crawl inside their main protagonists' heads and follow along with their thoughts stream-of-consciousness style. In this, then, Enright's book helps clarify a point I wanted to make in my original Dalloway essay, but wasn't sure how to actually verbalize until now; that although Woolf's original 1925 literary experiment should definitely still be admired for what it tries to accomplish, it's also true that we as a global culture have now had 80 years to expand and improve on those early rough Modernist experiments, with results these days that are just so much better than any of those trailblazers could've ever achieved back then. Because really, if you want to describe Enright's personal writing style, and explain a little about why people go so nuts for her work, just think of stream-of-consciousness done exactly and perfectly right -- no cruddy head-scratching abstraction, no pretentious "artsy for artsy's sake" run-on sentences, no even calling undue attention to itself, but rather a confident and solid style that seems to somehow slip right up into our hero's brain without either her or us noticing.
Because that's the thing -- it's a fascinating story, really fascinating, but the way it's told to us is by Veronica simply remembering little bits and pieces of it here and there, by her slowly revealing her opinion and attitudes about certain relatives and events in a piecemeal fashion. The Gathering is a story as we more often hear stories in real life, not as a traditional sit-down A-to-B-to-C uninterrupted tale, but rather as a loose collection of scraps and trails, with the narrator themselves sometimes remembering situations wrongly, sometimes deliberately lying to us. That's what makes the whole childhood aspect of this plot so intriguing, after all, is because Veronica herself admits that her memories of it all are so spotty, that sometimes she thinks she might be filling in the blanks in a certain false way deliberately, because in her heart that's what she really wants the situation to have been. Was Liam sexually abused as a kid? Was she as well, and now has only repressed memories of it all? Or does she want an easy excuse for herself as to why Liam ended up the way he did as an adult, and a lazy justification for her growing coldness to her husband? Was her brother simply a hustler, when all is said and done? Could she and the other siblings have done more, or was he simply doomed to have the kind of romantically tragic life that he did?
Enright takes on all these questions in The Gathering, and a whole lot more; and like I said, by telling the entire story through the filter of this very human, very flawed creature at its center, it makes us as the reader as confused about the objective "truth" as Veronica is herself. And that ultimately is maybe Enright's biggest lesson here -- that no matter what the trauma, no matter what dark things may or may not have occurred in our lives that we may or may not remember, it is how we perceive those things and react to them that is ultimately the only important thing. If Veronica chooses to be a victim, then that's what she's going to be, regardless of whether or not she actually was the victim of something in her past; if she chooses not to be, she suddenly isn't, even if she actually was abused as a kid and by all rights should be a victim. In a way it's actually the opposite of what we think of when we think of traditional Irish stories, because Enright is arguing that all of us are ultimately in charge of our own fates; it's for such reasons, like I said, that I ended up not really thinking of this novel as a typical gloomy Irish story when actually reading it, despite it sharing so many surface-level qualities.
And then of course no discussion of The Gathering is complete without a mention of Enright's mastery over the English language, a detail that both assured its nomination in the first place and that this year guaranteed its win over all those other fey little pointless nominees. I don't like quoting from books in my reviews, in that I feel quotes without context rarely ever convey the full power of why you wanted to quote them in the first place; that said, here is a particularly beautiful passage from the book that struck me quite powerfully, a paragraph that not only nicely explains what is always the most annoying thing about Liam-black-sheep types, but also is indicative of what concerning Enright's writing style I love so much...
"The problem with Liam was never something big. The problem with Liam was always a hundred small things. He had cigarettes but no matches, did I have matches? Yes, but the match breaks, the match doesn't strike, he can't light these cheap Albanian trash matches. Do I have a lighter? F-ck, he has split the matches. Why don't I have a lighter? He goes to find a lighter, rattling all the drawers in the kitchen. He walks out, leaving the back door open. He comes in the front door twenty minutes later with a lighter he found on the street -- lying just outside the house actually -- except that it is wet. He lights the oven from the pilot and lights his cigarette from the oven and burns his hand and after he has put his hand under the tap for a while he fusses in the cupboard for a baking tin and he puts the lighter -- a cheap, plastic lighter -- he actually puts it in the oven, and when I scream at him he shouts right back at me and there is a tussle at the oven door. After which, there is an hour of sulking because I do not trust him to dry a lighter in the oven without burning the house down. And after the sulk comes The Discussion."
Anyone who's......less
bookshelves:
best
Outstanding. The Gathering is an early (and strong) contender for my favorite book of 2008. I'm tempted to add it to the "best" shelf but I want to wait a bit just to be sure that I'm not over-zealous in my surprise and affection. Give me a couple of months to make up my mind as it matters more than a little. I'll be honest; I'll use semi-colons. Hyphens too. And fragments. Anyway, I was prepared to like this book but I did not expect to seize it as fiercely as I have. It's abo...more
Outstanding. The Gathering is an early (and strong) contender for my favorite book of 2008. I'm tempted to add it to the "best" shelf but I want to wait a bit just to be sure that I'm not over-zealous in my surprise and affection. Give me a couple of months to make up my mind as it matters more than a little. I'll be honest; I'll use semi-colons. Hyphens too. And fragments. Anyway, I was prepared to like this book but I did not expect to seize it as fiercely as I have. It's about grief and revision--and grief and revision--about failed lumps of passion that become these tar-pits of evil, horror, memory and love love love. The characters who are already dead have clamped down and clamped hard upon the living (though some do not live so long after all, there are wrenching ends and also brightly colored ones), the living nearly choke on the knowledge that they are little more than entertainment for the rest of the world, and all of them willingly abbreviate their, well, souls, for the sake of...appearances? Convenience? The Roman Catholic church? I don't know, and my sense is that I will fall down all over this question for quite some time.
Another thing about Enright's book is how precisely tricky it is. There are blunt moments of almost happy endings, tender little lures and sweet ones at that which the reader knows--knows just well enough so that it hurts--will not come to be. It's Enright's sharp blow that puts out the world, the shudder that makes all the sea (you'll know it when you see it) of sickness that everyone involved will have to swim through, the awful thing that when it ripens (and does it ever) is dispatched in measured bites of custard pie. No, really. Those moments when the novel stumbles into hope only do so when everything else has been wiped out or boxed up or joined some muddy plain of ghosts. Or plane. The various understandings of the words are applicable. Look them up. While you're at it, look up the word "catholic". Interesting, no?
It is also tempting to draw quotes from the book, but I think that to do so would be an insult to the text. I have similar (though stronger...sorry, Ms. Enright) feelings about Coetzee's work. Like Coetzee, Enright has managed to find the barest parts of life, her work is sharp, observant, and bruising. Let's leave the comparison at that for now, eh? Hopefully she'll keep true to her gifts and continue to produce works of almost perfect exposure...and in a way, those things that are *almost* perfect are also the loveliest. The Gathering--for all of its darkness-- touches upon all of those things that are beautiful because they will never be close enough. Don't believe me? Fine. Read it for yourself, then stare and wonder.
Update: this book has compelled me to re-examine (calibrate?) how I read everything...which for me is both harsh and exhilarating. Accordingly, I have given it the "Best" designation.
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bookshelves:
books-i-loved
Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
the bereaved
This is the best novel about grief and bereavement that I have read.
Enright captures the peculiar relationship of close siblings perfectly. It is not about love - you don't "love" a close sibling just as you don't "love" your arm. They are a part of you. When they die, you are broken. It is a hard, bitter, angry book because the grief you feel when a close sibling dies is a hard, bitter anger. An anger that is as close to madness as makes no difference. Grief colours ever...more
This is the best novel about grief and bereavement that I have read.
Enright captures the peculiar relationship of close siblings perfectly. It is not about love - you don't "love" a close sibling just as you don't "love" your arm. They are a part of you. When they die, you are broken. It is a hard, bitter, angry book because the grief you feel when a close sibling dies is a hard, bitter anger. An anger that is as close to madness as makes no difference. Grief colours everything, and makes everything - the past, the present, present loved-ones - unknowable and unreachable, for a time.
Veronica tells the story of her grandmother, acknowledging that the story she tells is imagined, unreal. I see this as a metaphor for the veil of unreality that bereavement places between the bereaved and external reality. Because you can't tear down the veil, you live in a capsule in a state akin to madness, unable to reach out to those who you love[d]. Unable to connect with their attempts to love you and bring you back. And resenting their efforts to do so.
This novel is not "about" the revelation of what happened to her brother. What may or may not have actually happened is ultimately not important. Rather, it is a novel that describes the symptoms of Veronica's grief. One of these symptoms is her attempt to understand the past and to "see" (reveal) what happened to her brother. (Veronica's disconnection from her husband and children is another symptom. Her bitterness towards her surviving family is another.)
Veronica attempts to make sense of her grandmother's history is symptomatic of how the bereaved - lost in their capsule of unreality - struggle to make sense of their experience. That struggle can lead us to misinterpret both what we see and the meaning of what we do. We do irrational things but think they are significant and rational choices. We misunderstand events in the past and present, yet think we are being clear-sighted and insightful. Or we remember things in the past that were true then, and think that they are the key to the present. We grasp at straws in our attempts to find something tangible to hold on to. Meanwhile our sense of the reality going on around us seems heightened and intense, yet we at the same time disconnect from it.
Above all, we get very, very lost in the whole experience. Lost, desperate, confused, angry and alone. And so very sad.
We, we we. Clearly I mean me. This was my experience of bereavement and I had never read it as I experienced it, until I read The Gathering. No other author past or present has so accurately represented what I lived through. Because it captures the state of grief so succinctly, with such subtlety, I consider Enright's book to be a work of genius.
And by the way, her writing is at times breath-taking.
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Read in October, 2007
This was the only book on the Booker short list that I did not want to read. When it won, I was disappointed because I thought it looked too much like Banville's The Sea, and I did not enjoy my time with that book. However, I thought I needed to give The Gathering a shot. No, I was not pleasantly surprised.
Enright's The Gathering may have a some inciteful, well written sentences, and it may be well structured both in sequence and theme, but for what purpose? I did no...more
This was the only book on the Booker short list that I did not want to read. When it won, I was disappointed because I thought it looked too much like Banville's The Sea, and I did not enjoy my time with that book. However, I thought I needed to give The Gathering a shot. No, I was not pleasantly surprised.
Enright's The Gathering may have a some inciteful, well written sentences, and it may be well structured both in sequence and theme, but for what purpose? I did not feel that the structure was unique and, frankly, I'm getting tired of all of these books that are praised because of how many different ways the author can write a depressing sentence (Enright usually generates hers by showing the human being and its body at its basest). Those poetic depictions lose their impact (and really make me question the skill of the author--does she not know how to write another type of sentence?) when they are repeated line after line, page after page. There was no balance.
I know that Enright was not attempting to balance this book. She admits that anyone not wanting to feel depressed should not read it. But just because she executed her intent does not make me appreciate it. I don't shy away from depressing novels, but I at least hope feel somewhat what the narrator is feeling--but in this case I did not care at all about the narrator. Her depression did not affect me, at least, not frequently enough.
Though they are similar as both deal with present grief and a tragic past, this Booker is worse that Banville's The Sea. At least The Sea was written in beautiful prose. It flowed smoothly. Enright's is downright base and choppy. The only poetry is in how basely she describes sex and death with her disconnected, stiff prose. And even that runs dry after a few chapters.
The Booker judges say that they did not think this book would win when they first read it but that it is better with subsequent reads. Well, they had to read it more than once. I'm not willing to give it another try, and I would advise others to forgo it altogether....less
bookshelves:
bookgroup
Read in April, 2008
recommended to Melody by:
Pat Clotfelter
Veronica and the remainder of her large family, are about to gather at the family home for the wake of her brother. As she prepares for this reunion she tries to decide which of her memories are real and which are imagined. There is something that Veronica remembers that may or may not have happened in her grandmother’s house. She skitters around it – teases us with what she may or may not have seen, then deliberately goes off to something that she may, or may not remember; something that ...more
Veronica and the remainder of her large family, are about to gather at the family home for the wake of her brother. As she prepares for this reunion she tries to decide which of her memories are real and which are imagined. There is something that Veronica remembers that may or may not have happened in her grandmother’s house. She skitters around it – teases us with what she may or may not have seen, then deliberately goes off to something that she may, or may not remember; something that may or may not be related, something that may or may not be significant, until she decides – enough is enough, then she hits us with what she thinks occurred – then goes right back to her possible memories with the fumes of alcohol stinking up the clarity.
This is a book of pieced together memories, or an attempt at memories. A central question in the book is what events in your life make you who you are? Reading the book is like walking through a murky, foggy alley, feeling your way around; touching some things, smelling something slightly familiar, but still not quite knowing where you are or where you are going. At one point the narrator, Veronica, tells us how a part of her remains at the point where she is remembering:
“And a part of me goes with her when the car drives away. Another part of me is still, these years later, walking along the road where the stranger set us down.”
All through the story Veronica fiddles with her memories until she gets a version she can live with – a version that gives her comfort or explains things for her. But her biggest struggle is to decide what things in her past or in her brother’s past, or in her mother’s past, caused happiness or unhappiness. It’s hard enough knowing if things happening in the present make you happy; if things in the present are good or bad things; if things in the present should be stopped or continued – much less whether things that happened in the past, things you remember or think you remember made you happy or if you simply tolerated it.
The book also explores the way that you can completely forget some aspects of your life, your 21st birthday, how you met a certain person, what color your first boyfriend’s eyes were, but some memories just will not go away – they haunt you, they are constantly with you.
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bookshelves:
the-bad
Read in February, 2008
Please excuse me as I make a noise of annoyance, disgust, boredom and all around dissatisfaction... UGHARGHHHHUHHH. Don't even know how to spell that or if it makes any sense. Hey, that makes a nice segue into my review.
Let me start with the one perk I can honestly give this book. Anne Enright has a beautiful grasp of words but she doesn't know how to use them. She also had a wonderful gem of an idea for a story, but she didn't know how to develop it. Combine those two together you get ...more
Please excuse me as I make a noise of annoyance, disgust, boredom and all around dissatisfaction... UGHARGHHHHUHHH. Don't even know how to spell that or if it makes any sense. Hey, that makes a nice segue into my review.
Let me start with the one perk I can honestly give this book. Anne Enright has a beautiful grasp of words but she doesn't know how to use them. She also had a wonderful gem of an idea for a story, but she didn't know how to develop it. Combine those two together you get a reader thinking, "I want to like this, but I don't know how." The Gathering could have easily been a beautiful, deep and touching novel, but unfortunately Enright fails at delivering that.
I found the story as a whole much too disconnected and disjointed. I constantly felt like I was being bounced around. By the time I got relatively comfortable in one scene I suddenly found myself in a completely different time and place with unfamiliar characters. It wasn't just the line of the story that was disjointed, but the actual writing itself. Actually, that might not be the best way to describe writing that is mostly run-on sentences and rambling thoughts, that's pretty much the opposite of disjointed, even so, it somehow still managed to feel that way.
The story wasn't even saved by it's characters. There wasn't a single fully developed, or even half developed character throughout the whole book. Even our main character, Veronica, remained two-demensional at best, despite having moments where I felt I should be feeling a connection with her. Rather it felt like I was standing awkwardly by someone I barely knew while they had an emotional breakdown, glancing occasionally over my shoulder wondering if I should leave them alone or dumbly pat them on the back. I think I was expected to be attatched to most of the characters, but I wasn't. I didn't feel sympathy for them, nor did I even like any of them. It made the book even more boring and uncomfortable.
It's a great disappointment to read a book you think has so much potential to only have it fall flat. If Enright has written any poetry I might be interested in reading that, I have an inkling she would make a fairly good poet, but I'm going to be staying away from any other novels she's written. Especially if they're anything like this....less
bookshelves:
ireland,
literature,
memory,
uk
Read in April, 2008
In terms of writing, characterization, and the exploration of memory - this is among the best books I have read, period.
I am not a grieving middle-aged woman with a large family who has lost her brother to suicide. But the strong and accurate portrayal of alienation, loss, and grief - and the way people deal with these things in ways that are erratic, self-destructive, confusing, and unpredictable and illogical even to themselves - had me finding myself identifying with the narrator much mo...more
In terms of writing, characterization, and the exploration of memory - this is among the best books I have read, period.
I am not a grieving middle-aged woman with a large family who has lost her brother to suicide. But the strong and accurate portrayal of alienation, loss, and grief - and the way people deal with these things in ways that are erratic, self-destructive, confusing, and unpredictable and illogical even to themselves - had me finding myself identifying with the narrator much more frequently than I would have ever expected. I picked up this book expecting a good story and good writing. I didn't anticipate finding myself written into it in so many specific, concrete ways.
This book has been written about as being about a large family and intergenerational relationships; as about domestic relationships between women. For me, it was about isolation, alienation, an inability to connect with the world, a certain kind of numbness. It is about a woman severed from her life and lost in her memories, and unsure of what can be trusted - even and especially herself. As someone who has dealt with a different kind of loss and alienation, this book resonated with me deeply, and spoke to my experience more eloquently than I myself could. Enright's use of language is not only beautiful, it is also accurate. It hit me like a brick, in every sentence.
Another review has written that there is a lack of balance because of this intense style. I don't mind a book (especially a relatively short one like this) that demands my attention in every sentence. I savored my reading of this book, and I look forward to doing it again - slowly, and personally.
I found the ending lacking compared with the rest of the book, but I plan to reread it as soon as I get the chance. The journey of going through this book is so amazing that it makes the ending inconsequential in a way....less
When I see that some people have given this book five stars, I start to question my own sanity. For me, the book had wonderful potential when I took it off the shelf and the Booker Award sticker only reinforced my impression that this would be a great read: WRONG. Wonderful words strung together does not a good story make. The narrator is completely two-dimensional as written and I was unable to connect with her or her perspective in any way. Yes, I understand the woman's "beloved" ...more
When I see that some people have given this book five stars, I start to question my own sanity. For me, the book had wonderful potential when I took it off the shelf and the Booker Award sticker only reinforced my impression that this would be a great read: WRONG. Wonderful words strung together does not a good story make. The narrator is completely two-dimensional as written and I was unable to connect with her or her perspective in any way. Yes, I understand the woman's "beloved" brother fell apart and committed suicide, but still her ennui and depression rang false, as did her love/hate feelings for her overly-large, Irish family. I understand that the book is about grief, but I never knew where that all-encompassing grief came from because it was never developed in the novel. As a sister, I assume she was close to her brother and I'm told that by the author, but I really only have the descriptions of her grief to go by because I didn't get any sense of their close relationship from reading the story.
I was also turned off by the frequent and BASE descriptions of the bodily variety. No one over the age of twelve likes a story, be it comedy or tragedy, entirely made up of d**k jokes. I found it juvenile and off-putting. The sad thing is once the final secret of the origin of her brother's (and her?) troubles was revealed I just didn't care anymore. The one thing I appreciated about the book is that it put to bed my worry that I wouldn't find a book that I DIDN'T like and maybe my tastes were not as discerning as a true book lover's might be. I thank the author for that revelation, at least.
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bookshelves:
read-in-2008
Read in March, 2008
I bought this book because I once again fell for Borders' Buy-1-Get-1-50%-Off deal. I needed a 2nd book, and this one won the Man Booker Prize in 2007. Hell, I thought, it can't be that bad.
Well, it wasn't terrible, but once again, I was deathly bored. More and more, I find myself very annoyed at authors who use the carrot-on-a-stick opening shtick (e.g. "OMG, you guys! Something HORRIBLE happened at my grandmother's house in 1968!! Now you've got to read this to find out what it w...more
I bought this book because I once again fell for Borders' Buy-1-Get-1-50%-Off deal. I needed a 2nd book, and this one won the Man Booker Prize in 2007. Hell, I thought, it can't be that bad.
Well, it wasn't terrible, but once again, I was deathly bored. More and more, I find myself very annoyed at authors who use the carrot-on-a-stick opening shtick (e.g. "OMG, you guys! Something HORRIBLE happened at my grandmother's house in 1968!! Now you've got to read this to find out what it was!!!! LOL!!!")
I should have known better than to fall for that amateur ploy.
I liked that the narrator was selfish and unreliable, and terribly distant from her loved ones in her grief. But the prose and the wandering, unstructured storytelling were just unbearable. As a short 25-page think piece on the nature of grief, maybe. As a 200+ page novel, ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz. I finished it quickly just so I didn't have to put up with reading it anymore.
What was most problematic was that the relationship between Veronica and Liam was never developed much beyond a shared cigarette on a mattress. Nor between Veronica and any of her siblings, really. All the characterization was done haphazardly, randomly, in tiny insignificant pieces such that I really didn't care who died, or who did what to whom, and all this damn prose pontificating on the nature of death and grief just got boring....less
Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
language lovers
Enright does many lovely things in this novel. I imagine the language of this novel is what gained the admiration of the Booker committee. Enright can do a lot in a paragraph:
The problem with Liam was never something big. The problem with Liam was always a hundred small things. He had cigarettes but no matches, did I have matches? Yes, but the match breaks, the match doesn't strike, he can't light these cheap Albanian trash matches. Do I have a lighter? F—k, he has split the matches. Why ...more
Enright does many lovely things in this novel. I imagine the language of this novel is what gained the admiration of the Booker committee. Enright can do a lot in a paragraph:
The problem with Liam was never something big. The problem with Liam was always a hundred small things. He had cigarettes but no matches, did I have matches? Yes, but the match breaks, the match doesn't strike, he can't light these cheap Albanian trash matches. Do I have a lighter? F—k, he has split the matches. Why don't I have a lighter? He goes to find a lighter, rattling all the drawers in the kitchen. He walks out, leaving the back door open. He comes in the front door twenty minutes later with a lighter he found on the street – lying just outside the house actually – except that it is wet. He lights the oven from the pilot and lights his cigarette from the oven and burns his hand and after he as put his hand under the tap for a while he fusses in the cupboard for a baking tin and he puts the lighter – a cheap, plastic lighter – he actually puts it in the oven, and when I scream at him he shouts right back at me and there is a tussle at the oven door. After which, there is an hour of sulking because I do not trust him to dry a lighter in the oven without burning the house down. And after the sulk come The Discussion.
I enjoyed reading this novel, but felt toward the end that it was a bit longer that the plot could sustain. Being a new Dublin resident, I enjoyed recognizing locations in the novel, and it helped develop my understanding of Irish vernacular. ...less
Read in December, 2007
I'd like to give this book 2.5 stars. It's better than okay, but I can't really say that I liked it. It's a romantic, drifty, floaty, "I've been unmoored" book about grief, and I much prefer more concrete books like Joan Didion's Magical Thinking.
There are some moments of real illumination here. But I never felt the loss of the person being grieved, and the marriage complication seems tacked on to give a possible consequence to the narrator's extremely self-involved actions. ...more
I'd like to give this book 2.5 stars. It's better than okay, but I can't really say that I liked it. It's a romantic, drifty, floaty, "I've been unmoored" book about grief, and I much prefer more concrete books like Joan Didion's Magical Thinking.
There are some moments of real illumination here. But I never felt the loss of the person being grieved, and the marriage complication seems tacked on to give a possible consequence to the narrator's extremely self-involved actions. There's a childhood secret which is boring and predictable, but it's presented with as much awe as if it's a jewel. Then, once presented, it's no longer dealt with. One character turns out to be awful, but there's no hint of this for, well, half of the novel, so it comes more as a "huh?" moment rather than a development or extension of his character.
I had a hard time getting through this book, and even now, it's already receding. There's a real lack of a center, and I suppose one could argue that since it's a book about grief, it's about absence, so it's not supposed to have a center. But the result of this is that it feels empty to me, that it moves around the edges but never really gets into anything.
However--I've liked articles that I've read by Enright, and I like how tough she is, and I appreciate that her characters actually have sex lives, so I'd maybe read other shorter things by her.
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Read in October, 2007
I was given a signed copy of this book a few days after Enright won the Booker Prize. She had signed it at a conference on Irish women writers, at the University of Leuven in Belgium, where my daughter had presented a paper. I had tagged along as a tourist, and the gray skies and gray buildings of Leuven perfectly suited the gray mood produced by the book.
Don't read "The Gathering" if you're already in a grim mood. Yes, there is some humor, of a very bitter, sardonic kind, but the na...more
I was given a signed copy of this book a few days after Enright won the Booker Prize. She had signed it at a conference on Irish women writers, at the University of Leuven in Belgium, where my daughter had presented a paper. I had tagged along as a tourist, and the gray skies and gray buildings of Leuven perfectly suited the gray mood produced by the book.
Don't read "The Gathering" if you're already in a grim mood. Yes, there is some humor, of a very bitter, sardonic kind, but the narrative is primarily colored by despair and rage.
The narrator, a mother of two married to a successful businessman, lives in a tony suburb of newly prosperous Dublin. Her beloved brother has just committed suicide, and her huge and hugely dysfunctional family is beginning to gather for his funeral. The rage comes from growing up in a family of 12 children, with an emotionally absent mother and a cypher for a father, along with assorted traumas I won't spoil for you here.
This is beautifully written prose, verging into poetry from time to time. Survivors of a strict Catholic upbringing will feel frissons of pain and pleasure, and others will perhaps understand us better after reading this book.
I will treasure my signed and dated copy of "The Gathering," but I don't think I will read it again. Or maybe I will, but I'll have to be a very sunny frame of mind first.
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bookshelves:
blog,
cross-reviewed,
reviewed
Read in January, 2008
The Gathering was not the book that I thought it would be when I began reading it. As promised, it is a journey through a family's lively history of family gatherings, childhood adventures, and diminished dreams. I type that the dreams were diminished, but if I were to be more accurate, I would type that they were reevaluated. The ideals that we hold have room for adaptation. There are beautiful moments that are both imagined and revealed. I enjoyed this journey, but not in the way that I i...more
The Gathering was not the book that I thought it would be when I began reading it. As promised, it is a journey through a family's lively history of family gatherings, childhood adventures, and diminished dreams. I type that the dreams were diminished, but if I were to be more accurate, I would type that they were reevaluated. The ideals that we hold have room for adaptation. There are beautiful moments that are both imagined and revealed. I enjoyed this journey, but not in the way that I imagined that I would. The lilting language offered a certain charm and the boisterous family reminded me my own, but is still was not what I expected.
Instead it was a beautifully written hypothetical. The journey of a married woman's life and the passionate relationship that she shared with her brother. It fluctuates, like many relationships, between love, hate, and misunderstanding. I appreciated the lovely writing, but I never found a personal connection to the characters. Though it is well written, I felt distanced from the story.
I always like to add a memorable passage from books:
"There are no markers, no separate graves. I wonder how many people were slung into the dirt of this field and realize, too late, that the place is boiling with corpses, the ground is knit out of their tangled bones." (p160)...less
Read in December, 2007
It's been said that Sigmund Freud said of the Irish "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."
After reading the Gathering you can begin to understand why. The Irish seem to be haunted not only by guilt and shame, but by the ghosts of their dead relatives as well. Here's a particularly telling passage from the novel :
" I know I sound bitter, and Christ I wish I wasn't such a hard bitch sometimes, but my brother blamed me for twenty years or ...more
It's been said that Sigmund Freud said of the Irish "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."
After reading the Gathering you can begin to understand why. The Irish seem to be haunted not only by guilt and shame, but by the ghosts of their dead relatives as well. Here's a particularly telling passage from the novel :
" I know I sound bitter, and Christ I wish I wasn't such a hard bitch sometimes, but my brother blamed me for twenty years or more. He blamed me for my nice house, with the nice white paint on the walls, and the nice daughters in their bedrooms of nice lilac and nicer pink. He blamed me for my golf loving husband, though God knows it is many years since Tom had free time for a round of golf. He treated me like I was selling out on something, though on what I do not know-- because Liam did not allow dreams either, of course. My brother had strong ideas about justice, but he was unkind to every single person who tried to love him; mostly, and especially, to every woman he ever slept with, and still after a lifetime of spreading hurt around, he managed to blame me. And I managed to feel guilty. Now why is that ?
This is what shame does. This is the anatomy and mechanism of a family--a whole fucking country--drowning in shame."
Being of Irish decent myself I can safely say Yeah, that's the Irish for you. ...less
Read in November, 2007
Enright is brilliant. She tells the story in the voice of an angry, bitter woman capable of the darkest humor and the most unreliable of narrations. Veronica's responsible for identifying the corpse and bringing back from Brighton the remains of her drowned brother. She's also footing the bill for the funeral and coffin; that's how close she was to Liam. She believes his problems started the year they and their younger sister Kitty (there were 12 Hegarty children if you count Stevie, "the l...more
Enright is brilliant. She tells the story in the voice of an angry, bitter woman capable of the darkest humor and the most unreliable of narrations. Veronica's responsible for identifying the corpse and bringing back from Brighton the remains of her drowned brother. She's also footing the bill for the funeral and coffin; that's how close she was to Liam. She believes his problems started the year they and their younger sister Kitty (there were 12 Hegarty children if you count Stevie, "the little angel in heaven") were sent to stay with her grandparents (her mother may have been experiencing a breakdown). While there, either Liam or possibly Veronica herself fell prey to the sexual advances of her grandparents' landlord. Veronica is not exactly sure which of these memories is the true one, especially since imagining horrible things is her strong suit. And imagine she does, delving desperately into her grandmother's past as a way of understanding why such a woman would allow such a man to have access to the children, while Veronica's own unhappy life, with husband and lovely young daughters (although, as Liam has told her, "Pity about the teeth" on one of the girls), reaches a critical point of its own.
I do believe this one may wind up in top position in my favorite books list at the end of December.
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My family has no appreciation for a good, honest tragedy. They poke fun at me for liking "depressing" things. I talked this book up to my mom, because I thought she'd enjoy the author's no-nonsense sensibility and her description of how an enormous Irish family shows its love, but now I realize that I can't buy her this one for her birthday. ;)
This story of a large Irish family converging after the death of one of their own masterfully handles the most difficult parts of memory and...more
My family has no appreciation for a good, honest tragedy. They poke fun at me for liking "depressing" things. I talked this book up to my mom, because I thought she'd enjoy the author's no-nonsense sensibility and her description of how an enormous Irish family shows its love, but now I realize that I can't buy her this one for her birthday. ;)
This story of a large Irish family converging after the death of one of their own masterfully handles the most difficult parts of memory and love. Liam, uncontrollable and destructive but still loved and adored, has finally drowned himself in the sea, leaving his closest sister Veronica to handle the aftermath and to try to make sense of his brief life (and of her life as well).
I've heard it said that Enright's prose - her gruff voice, her emphasis on meaningful action - reworks the conventions of "female" language. I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment, but it's an interesting way to describe how she hurtles through the deepest parts of grief and memory and malaise. It's like listening to my aunts talk after a couple of beers, but in a way that doesn't make you want to chew your arm off.
The FIRST Booker Prize winner that I have LIKED!...less
bookshelves:
irish
Read in November, 2007
Enright’s The Gathering is a bleak, often brutal, and sometimes viciously humorous, gem of a novel. Veronica Hegarty is on her way to London to collect the body of her dead brother, Liam, who committed suicide by drowning himself. In her grieving, Veronica navigates her past, and Liam’s, and the entire large Irish Catholic family she belongs to. What unfolds is a tapestry of recollections, atmospheric and unreliable. Veronica, being only 11 months younger than Liam, shared a close re...more
Enright’s The Gathering is a bleak, often brutal, and sometimes viciously humorous, gem of a novel. Veronica Hegarty is on her way to London to collect the body of her dead brother, Liam, who committed suicide by drowning himself. In her grieving, Veronica navigates her past, and Liam’s, and the entire large Irish Catholic family she belongs to. What unfolds is a tapestry of recollections, atmospheric and unreliable. Veronica, being only 11 months younger than Liam, shared a close relationship with him, the type of pairing that happens in large families (there are 9 living Hegarty children at the start of the novel); and she believes that the cause of Liam’s suicide, and his drinking, and his generally haphazard life had much to do with a terrible scene that she stumbled upon at her grandmother Ada’s house one summer; a scene that she imagines wasn't singular. Enright's writing is unsentimental and intelligent, investigating how our own personal histories (however hazy or secretive) as well as those we are surrounded by inform and affect us....less
Read in May, 2008
The artistry here is masterful. I was hooked by the writing style, and its attempts to understand and fill in memory, perceptions and the past. I know there are some who didn't like the book because of the narrator and the subject matter -- and it is true that the narrator is not someone you will like (though that isn't the point, of course) -- but if you can get past that, there is some insightful writing here.
I never minded 'listening' to the thoughts in the narrator's head (horrible and...more
The artistry here is masterful. I was hooked by the writing style, and its attempts to understand and fill in memory, perceptions and the past. I know there are some who didn't like the book because of the narrator and the subject matter -- and it is true that the narrator is not someone you will like (though that isn't the point, of course) -- but if you can get past that, there is some insightful writing here.
I never minded 'listening' to the thoughts in the narrator's head (horrible and self-indulgent as they could be), the style definitely different from other narrative voices out there. But since we are 'inside' her head, of course it will be self-indulgent as she works her way through 5 months of grief and shock.
Only once -- somewhere in the middle -- did I get frustrated with the book, finding whatever it was at the time boring and repetitive, but that feeling moved on.
It's even hard to rate this book, because I do think it's amazingly good but I'm not sure that I 'like' it (whatever that may mean) enough to give it the highest rating.
I think it may need to be reread -- and probably right away -- to understand everything the author wants us to, but I can't see myself doing that....less
bookshelves:
literature
Read in March, 2008
Winner of the 2007 Man Booker prize, this poignant, melancholy novel by Enright has several things to recommend it. Foremost was the writing style which was both brazenly direct and subtly evasive in its treatment of grief. At times edging to the rim of hope and resolution Enright throws these glimmers of light painfully away. Enright also captures the intimacies of a large close family well, where ancient minor flaws ferment and fester into grudges as deep as any abyss.
In this fir...more
Winner of the 2007 Man Booker prize, this poignant, melancholy novel by Enright has several things to recommend it. Foremost was the writing style which was both brazenly direct and subtly evasive in its treatment of grief. At times edging to the rim of hope and resolution Enright throws these glimmers of light painfully away. Enright also captures the intimacies of a large close family well, where ancient minor flaws ferment and fester into grudges as deep as any abyss.
In this first hand tale, the protagonist Veronica, deals (poorly) with the death of her closest sibling Liam, from suicide. She retraces disjointed memories of her childhood, weaves fictionalized accounts of her grandmothers life, and in present time pushes her marriage to the brink of destruction, in part to reacquaint herself with her brother as well as to formulate her own ideas and thoughts on loss.
Although an interesting read, it somehow did not overwhelm me with greatness, and did not leave me wanting more (in fairness it also did not hvae me wishing I never read it either). ...less
bookshelves:
book-club
Read in November, 2007
I had a very difficult time getting into this book and it was not a pleasure to read. There was a lot of raw, sexual imagery and tone. I am decidedly not a prude, but some of the content actually made me uncomfortable. Maybe that was the point! The book was very depressing and sad, and I didn't feel that any of the characters were redeemed as promised on the back cover synopsis. Our bookclub wondered what about this book garnered it the Booker Prize. We weren't being petty; we really wante...more
I had a very difficult time getting into this book and it was not a pleasure to read. There was a lot of raw, sexual imagery and tone. I am decidedly not a prude, but some of the content actually made me uncomfortable. Maybe that was the point! The book was very depressing and sad, and I didn't feel that any of the characters were redeemed as promised on the back cover synopsis. Our bookclub wondered what about this book garnered it the Booker Prize. We weren't being petty; we really wanted to know what we were missing when we read it. I think that one of the positive things about the book was that there were a lot of moments where you had to fill in the blanks; you were not spoon-fed details. Perhaps the author's strength is in giving her readers credit that they are capable of doing that on their own. There were moments where a passage in the book struck me as brilliant and insightful, but the book would soon fall back into a kind of stream-of-consciousness style that I found difficult to follow. I did appreciate it as a work of literature, and am always glad when our bookclub chooses to read writings that are challenging and different. ...less
book data (includes all editions)
avg rating
(all editions):
3.17 (972 ratings)
avg rating
(this edition): 2.96
(23 ratings)
number of reviews: 365
