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The Gathering

by Anne Enright

2.95 · rating details · 6,726 ratings · 1,595 reviews

Anne Enright is a dazzling writer of international stature and one of Ireland’s most singular voices. Now she delivers The Gathering, a moving, evocative portrait of a large Irish family and a shot of fresh blood into the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in D...more

Paperback, 261 pages

Published September 10th 2007 by Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (first published 2007)

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15th out of 46 books — 625 voters

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New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2007

11th out of 100 books — 23 voters

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Community Reviews

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Dec 28, 2011

karen rated it

Shelves: icky-sex, it-is-for-class, littry-fiction, sshh-family-secrets

this book was very frustrating. i feel like i should love it, but it's like there is a barrier - a chastity belt between us preventing our love, and as much as i want it, it isn't going to happen for us. there is a quality to her writing that reminded me of what i loved or housekeeping, books i am also told i am supposed to love, but just can't feel anything for, like distant relations. she is a less antiseptic writer than hustvedt, though. i respect her prose - there are lines in here of ...more
this book was very frustrating. i feel like i should love it, but it's like there is a barrier - a chastity belt between us preventing our love, and as much as i want it, it isn't going to happen for us. there is a quality to her writing that reminded me of what i loved or housekeeping, books i am also told i am supposed to love, but just can't feel anything for, like distant relations. she is a less antiseptic writer than hustvedt, though. i respect her prose - there are lines in here of amazing beauty and melancholy that make me say - "yes, there you are - come out where i can see you," but the nothing-new-here feel to the plot means these moments are not enough.

and for some reason, i always thought i liked the booker award-winners more than, say, the pulitzers or other prestigious awards. in my mind, i had decided, "no, the bookers are the "good" awards - i usually like those". this idea, deeply rooted as it was, turns out to be like so many of my firmly-held ideas, and based on zero facts. i checked out the former booker winners and i have only actually read 10 of them,and only really liked 4. there are a lot of authors i like on there, but in a lot of cases, the winning book is one i haven't read. so - i give up my idea of the booker as my gold standard and one more ideal topples.

one odd thing of note about her ("her" being author/narrator)- she is endlessly preoccupied with casually describing the genitals of characters: her own, her husband's, the imagined genitals of her grandparents, etc. and they are usually compared to food - poultry etc. it is jarring, at first, then it becomes an accepted quirk, and by the end you can sort of see a psychological reason for it (for the narrator - enright's choice to grossly describe is still a mystery), but still - enough with the genitals.

having finished it, i shrug and i move on, not really feeling i have read anything that will stick with me, but while i was reading it, i did make little bookmark pages that have examples of a beautiful turn of phrase, or a nice original observation, and i would type them out here, but if they are the reason to read the book,in my opinion, i don't want to ruin the experience for any other future reader because they are like the jewels in the quiet night of her story.

i didn't say she inspired glorious prose from other people (less)

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Apr 29, 2008

Jason Pettus rated it

· review of another edition

(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 imagin...more

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Apr 20, 2008

Sammy rated it

Shelves: d-the-bad

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 ...morePlease 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)

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Oct 29, 2007

Trevor rated it

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 s...moreThis 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)

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Sep 19, 2008

Philip rated it

Anne Enright’s The Gathering deserves every ounce of praise it has received, and perhaps a bit more. It’s a family history of the Hegartys, told by Veronica after the death of her brother, Liam. So, and therefore, it is a wake, a stream of consciousness response to bereavement. There are more than shades of Molly Bloom here, as Veronica recounts intimate details of her own and her relatives’ ultimately inconsequential lives. And despite its obvious – and necessary – preoccupation with death and ...moreAnne Enright’s The Gathering deserves every ounce of praise it has received, and perhaps a bit more. It’s a family history of the Hegartys, told by Veronica after the death of her brother, Liam. So, and therefore, it is a wake, a stream of consciousness response to bereavement. There are more than shades of Molly Bloom here, as Veronica recounts intimate details of her own and her relatives’ ultimately inconsequential lives. And despite its obvious – and necessary – preoccupation with death and mourning, it is eventually an optimistic work, as optimistic as it can be when we are all revealed as rather inconsequential, temporal additions to the grand scheme of things, a grand scheme which, itself, is neither grand nor, indeed, a scheme. In such a void, we need blame to compensate grief. And after that is duly apportioned, at least we can just get on with it.

What The gathering is not, by the way, is the kind of book that would appeal to anyone wanting instant gratification, a murder on every page, celebrity, wealth, empty melodrama, character that can be worn, or even axe-grinding. It is not snobbish to say that The Gathering runs kilometres above such pulp. That it deals with the lives of ordinary people in a less than successful family is stated at the outset by the author. Of the Hegarty family experience, Veronica writes, “the great thing about being dragged up is that there is no-one to blame. We are entirely free range. We are human beings in the raw. Some survive it better than others, that’s all.” Now this is fascinating, because a little later she asserts that when individual Hegartys feel aggrieved with their lot, there is always someone to blame, “because with the Hegartys a declaration of unhappiness is always a declaration of blame.” So within the family, blame is impossible to apportion, but always applied. Given my own assertion that we often need blame to compensate grief, this leads us to an understanding of Veronica’s diatribe, her frustration at being unable to find someone to blame, but needing to do so in order to cope with the loss. The book, then, is her personal catharsis.

The beauty of The Gathering is its ability to remind us, fairly constantly, of the dysfunctional nature of the Hegarty family, whilst at the same time recording that most of those involved, in one way or other, find some kind of fulfilment in their lives. Liam, the brother who committed suicide by jumping off Brighton pier, was undoubtedly one of the casualties. And eventually the whole family shares his tragedy and, at the very end, ride through and past it.

One aspect of the Hegartys is particularly enigmatic, however, and that is their relation to religion. There’s a priest, now an ex-priest, if that is possible, in the family and, at least nominally, they are Catholics. But the religiosity in Veronica’s narrative is less than convincing and hints at the grudging, though perhaps she cannot admit this, even to herself. If she were still practising, she would be more deferential. If she had rejected her faith, she would be more cynical. And if she were a sceptic, her attacks would be more vehement. The next time I read The Gathering, I will be careful to note references to religion, since it remains an enigmatic aspect of Veronica’s character.

As Veronica’s narration progresses, it feels like she is getting things off her chest, a prosaic enough reaction to bereavement. By the end, we are confident that she has achieved her goal and that she will approach at least the next few days of her life with renewed vigour. Until, perhaps, she is plunged again into the miry uniqueness of who she is, its unacceptability, and its inevitability. For that is who we are. Choice is not ours. (less)

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Jun 24, 2008

Brian rated it

This book actually angered me, and I think this paragraph sums up why:

"I know, as I write these... that they require me to deal in facts. It is time to call an end to romance and just say what happened in Ada's house, the year that I was eight and Liam was barely nine."

That passage occurs about halfway through the book. The preceding pages are an endless series of shapeless ponderings on what may or may not have happened. The narrator leaps from one era to th...more

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Mar 14, 2008

Alice rated it

Shelves: read-in-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 w...more

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Feb 26, 2008

Fiona rated it

Recommends it for: the bereaved

Shelves: books-i-loved

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 colo...moreThis 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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Aug 19, 2011

Paul rated it

CELEBRITY DEATH MATCH

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Tonight's contest from the palatial surroundings of Monkstown Boxing Club here in Dun Laoghaire is to decide who is to represent the Republic of Ireland in the 2012 London Olympics Most Miserable Contemporary Novelist event.

(Scattered applause from the twenty or so people in the audience)

In the blue corner, we have Anne Enright

(Anne gets up tiredly from her chair in the corner and raises her h...more

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Apr 16, 2008

Molly Des Jardin rated it

Shelves: ireland, literature, memory, uk

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...more

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May 27, 2008

Lisa rated it

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

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Dec 23, 2007

Kevin rated it

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 twen...more

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Jul 09, 2008

Khaya rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Khaya by: margueya

Shelves: ireland

Another one for the growing life-is-just-too-short pile. This book was draggy and depressing, and I didn't get a whole lot out of it. What were those Booker judges thinking?

First of all, while I would be the last person to minimize molestation, its prevalence, and its traumatic effects, it has really become a literary cliche: young child of a dysfunctional family living in a less enlightened place and/or time is molested, no one ever finds out/addresses it properly, young child is...moreAnother one for the growing life-is-just-too-short pile. This book was draggy and depressing, and I didn't get a whole lot out of it. What were those Booker judges thinking?

First of all, while I would be the last person to minimize molestation, its prevalence, and its traumatic effects, it has really become a literary cliche: young child of a dysfunctional family living in a less enlightened place and/or time is molested, no one ever finds out/addresses it properly, young child is psychologically damaged and grows up to live a dissolute life with a tragic end. I can't tell you how many depressing books I've read like this. The way the author built up to the Big Secret that may (or may not) explain Liam's suicide, I was expecting something a little more original. Maybe if I had found the characters more sympathetic and relatable, I would have responded differently, but here, I was so tired of the annoying jumpy stream-of-consciousness and flat characters that my reaction was cynical rather than appropriately moved.

As I read the main character's various musings, I came up with two themes, neither of which particularly resonated with me:

1. Woe is me. My selfish, careless parents went and had this huge family without considering their children's needs. How could they do this to me. I may be an adult, but I'm still not over it and probably never will be.

2. I'm really into sex (except with my husband, for some unexplained reason). Most of my fantasies about my grandmother's imagined past are sexually charged. I'm particularly obsessed with male genitalia, and frequently imagine/describe them in various states with florid detail.

Maybe I'm just not sufficiently intellectual to appreciate this book, but despite some interesting prose, I just couldn't find the tragedy or either of these themes sympathetic, and really couldn't relate to the main character nor to anyone else in the book. As I plodded through, I found myself alternating between depression and apathy and finally decided to just put the book down.

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May 30, 2008

Jessica rated it

In The Gathering (winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2007), Anne Enright tells the story of a bitter and bruised family in bitter and bruised prose. I was sucked in for the ride - even though I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to go.

Veronica Hagerty narrates the story about her Irish Catholic family of twelve children. She is particularly concerned with a disturbing event that occurred one summer when she and two of her siblings, Liam and Kitty, are sent to live with their grandm...more

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Jan 21, 2008

Collin Shea rated it

This is a very Irish story, written in a very Irish way. At times, I was not thrilled with Enright's particular style, and it did take some effort for me to really immerse myself in this book, but upon finishing it, I see that there are quite a few marked pages. In my world of reading, marked pages are a very good sign. There were sentences, or paragraphs, or entire pages that I want to go back to, that intrigued or moved me in some way, that will continue on in my psyche long after I've moved ...more

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May 09, 2008

Yulia rated it

Shelves: repelled-by

Another Booker Prize winner that is so besotted with its ambiguity and ephemeral nature that it is entirely forgettable and endlessly frustrating. Please, no more showing off how one can see without seeing, live without living, or know without knowing. Tell a story! Don't give me a magic show.

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Jul 12, 2009

Jimmy rated it

Shelves: fiction

Ah, the gritty summer sidewalks of New York, with all those used paperbacks spread out on the pavement, waiting, like puppies at Bide-a-Wee, for new owners to take care of them! Hard by a corner on the Upper West Side, Anne Enright's "The Gathering" stares up at me with doleful eyes. A perusal of the cover, an absorbing paragraph or two on page one, a quick scan of review excerpts on the back cover, and the additional observation that the author was a 2007 Man Booker laureate, are eno...moreAh, the gritty summer sidewalks of New York, with all those used paperbacks spread out on the pavement, waiting, like puppies at Bide-a-Wee, for new owners to take care of them! Hard by a corner on the Upper West Side, Anne Enright's "The Gathering" stares up at me with doleful eyes. A perusal of the cover, an absorbing paragraph or two on page one, a quick scan of review excerpts on the back cover, and the additional observation that the author was a 2007 Man Booker laureate, are enough for me to gather up the orphan book and take it home with me.
As it turns out, the specific nature of the gathering in question, the sharp Irish flavor of the storytelling, and the dark corners into which Enright shines a light, make for a surprisingly intense experience for a reader new to the author. She is a marvelous writer; not one sentence feels lazy or wasted; each has, in fact, the concision and intensity of poetry.
Liam Hegarty, one of twelve Hegarty offspring, has died suddenly at 40 — a suicide. Veronica, 39, the sister closest in age and temperament to Liam, starts to examine long-ago events in her life, then goes further and deeper into the family history — circling around curious incidents related to her parents, grandparents and sundry, mysterious others, before focusing on one extremely disturbing incident, thirty years in the past, which may have had a disastrous influence on the remainder of Liam’s life.
The far-flung Hegartys, or what's left of them, gather in Dublin for the sorrowful wake and the inevitable reawakening of ancient feuds and recriminations, all seen through Veronica's eyes. Veronica, with two young girls and a teetering marriage to her husband, Tom, smolders with a general rage aimed at herself, her siblings, her husband, and really anybody in her line of fire. But Enright makes all of this unpleasantness palatable, even compelling, by the compassion, frankness, and terrible beauty of her writing. Here's an example, as Veronica, in a vulnerable moment, muses on a long-ago lover:
" 'I tried to catch you,' says the man in my dreams. 'But you were in the wrong year.' It is Michael Weiss. He has swum through the decades to get to me, he has fought his way up through layers of time. And when we stand face to face I say, 'How are you, Michael?' and he says, 'I'm fine. I'm just fine.' “
But she isn't fine. She prowls the neighborhood in her car all night, night after night, alternately fuming and haunted by painful memories. She may not realize that she is searching for redemption and the chance to move on, but she is; and somehow, just when she's sure she's forever imprisoned in the dark, Anne Enright shows her a way out.

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Jan 09, 2012

Shovelmonkey1 rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who like the lyrics but not the story

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list

Shelves: booker-prize-winner, 1001-books, bookcrossing-books, read-in-2011

This is a book which needs to be read and appreciated, not for the story but for the finely crafted, lyrical text. The story itself seemed to be a moderately predictable and stereotypical tale and I think I almost guessed the deep rooted reason for the suicide before the idea of looking for a possible cause had even hit the ground and started running. An impressively large Irish family gathers to mourn the passing of one of their siblings and history, as it is want to do at these kind of events,...more

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May 27, 2010

K.D. rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: No one (Jzhun, good luck!)

Recommended to K.D. by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2010 edition)

Shelves: booker, 1001-non-core

"God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same."

This line, found in the third to the last page of Anne Enright's The Gathering is an example of the many contradictions this novel has. This won the 2007 Man Booker Prize and I can see why. It is different. Ms. Enright has this fondness of contradicting herself not just in a single statement but in paragraphs, in several pages, the whole book and maybe even herself. Mrs. Enright, during the i...more

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Apr 09, 2009

Lucy rated it

I remember walking through the Guggenheim Museum and stopping at an exhibit called "White Canvas" or something like that. For all I know, somebody bought a blank canvas, realized they had no talent with painting but a knack for knowing what passes for cool and sold the idea to the powers that be of art. Or, perhaps it is actually art. I have no degree or expertise in that area, but a white canvas doesn't look like art to me.

Likewise, someone, Anne Engright in this case, wri...more

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Nov 21, 2007

Kelly rated it

Shelves: irish

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 ...more

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Apr 29, 2008

Paula Eisenberg rated it

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, bu...more

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Jun 13, 2008

Julie rated it

Shelves: book-club

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to those readers who are willing to live in an on-the-verge character's head who knows that she is unreliable and who may or may not be uncovering a repressed memory. If you can tolerate this ambiguity and like a dark -- although I would argue that the ending is optimistic -- lyrical, Irish tale, then this is the book for you. I found its title to be a bit of a misnomer, setting up the expectation that the protagonist's siblings would play a more prom...more

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Dec 03, 2008

Lisa rated it

The Gathering is a book full of very fine sentences and moments of uncanny insight--some (sentences and moments) quite stunning. But it was not an enjoyable reading experience for me. It's dreary book about grief and shame in which a self-indulgent narrator wanders randomly through memories old and new, none of them good. As my friend J put it, this was "just not a room I wanted to be in."

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Jun 27, 2010

Emily rated it

Shelves: fiction, british-lit

A review on the cover compared Anne Enright to Joan Didion, and, well, I haven't read any Joan Didion, so I can't say. But apparently Didion has "cold, furious grief" and so does Enright. Maybe I'd add "slightly manic" to the grieving part.

Veronica is one of 12, and her younger brother Liam has just killed himself. The general plot revolves around her attempts to gather her disparate brothers and sisters back to their ancestral home in Dublin for the funeral. ...more

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Feb 13, 2009

Barb rated it

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, book-club-reads, read-in-2009

Amazing It Could Win Any Award, Let Alone the Man Booker Prize.

This was another selection from my book club. We affectionately refer to it as the 'bad book club' because we have chosen some really bad, awful, horrid, ghastly books and this one is right up there with the worst of the worst as far as I'm concerned.

I guess you either get Anne Enright or you don't and I don't. If this had been some sort of cathartic memoir like Joan Didion's 'Year of Magical Thinking' I cou...more

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Nov 05, 2011

Alvina rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiksi

”Terkadang harus ada kematian untuk menyadarkan kita akan pentingnya kehidupan”

Sejujurnya saya membeli buku ini karena label “ A New York Times Bestseller dan A Man Booker Prize Winner ” di cover depannya. Kisahnya berawal ketika Abang Veronica yang bernama Liam ditemukan meninggal dunia karena bunuh diri di laut. Jenasahnya ditemukan oleh orang-orang di pesisir Brighton. Kabar buruk ini harus ia beritahukan kepada ibu mereka. Wanita yang telah melahirkan 12 belas anak dan telah mengal...more

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Aug 07, 2008

Anna rated it

I read several blog reviews of The Gathering by Anne Enright, winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize, and most had nothing but good things to say about the book. As those who read my blog know, I can't get enough of family sagas, so I had to add this to my ever-growing to-read list.

Veronica Hegarty, one of the 12 Hegarty children from Dublin, travels to England to pick up her dead brother, Liam, the victim of a suicide drowning. During the trip and later at the wake and funeral, Veronic...more

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Jun 09, 2008

Hol added it

The protagonist in this novel was born into the archetypal family of Irish literature: the men are alcoholic, the women pregnant early and often, the children violated and shamed. Plus there’s the church reminding everyone how loathsome the human body is, lest anyone slack off in the shame department. (Having just returned from Italy, which is full of sensual religious art, I have to wonder: How did Catholicism get so twisted in Ireland? Is the weather to blame?) Despite this, however, and despi...more

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May 28, 2008

Matt rated it

Shelves: contemporary-literature

May 29 CVN:

“The Gathering”

The stream of Veronica’s consciousness is confusing, contradictory, conflicted and rarely clear. She does battle with the tragic, but also the mundane. She, like many around her, is trying to navigate through the hurts, the loves, the villains and herself—in order to make sense of it all. Veronica is human. Anne Enright successfully depicts this chaotic stream of impressions and memories in “The Gathering,” and although the book is often as depre...moreMay 29 CVN:

“The Gathering”

The stream of Veronica’s consciousness is confusing, contradictory, conflicted and rarely clear. She does battle with the tragic, but also the mundane. She, like many around her, is trying to navigate through the hurts, the loves, the villains and herself—in order to make sense of it all. Veronica is human. Anne Enright successfully depicts this chaotic stream of impressions and memories in “The Gathering,” and although the book is often as depressing as it is difficult, it also serves as a reminder that no one is that far from the chaos.

Amidst a grayish life of complacency and baggage, Veronica is struck with the bludgeoning fact that her brother Liam has drowned himself. Of the members in her oversized Irish family, Veronica was the closest to Liam, having formed a close and intimate bond with her brother; a bond that was tied by shared experiences and long, late-night talks. However, the bonds wrapped tightly around the siblings are the same entanglements that caused Veronica to hate Liam. She cared more deeply for Liam than anyone else on earth, but because she often did not like him—he was not all that likable—her care was often transformed into the most excruciating pain.

In the wake of this tragedy Veronica hates her mother for being hopelessly naïve and clueless; avoiding pain and suffering by putting up walls between herself and reality. She hates her brothers and sisters for supposing to have an equal share in her pain over the loss of Liam despite the fact that none of them had an equal share in his life. She despises everyone and everything, in a sense, including her husband for just being there—and for not giving her a more exciting life—and figures from the distant past that may or may not have played a defining role in Liam’s life.

But of all the so-called villains in her life, no specter does Veronica despise more than herself. She feels guilt, pounding guilt, from not having done more; from having hated Liam; from having been given the right to live through a shameful experience shared with Liam decades prior while he was doomed to live a cursed life.

Thus, with a morose and plagued psyche, Veronica plods into the shadow of death; casting darkness on her life and making it seem all the more dissatisfying. She steps in and out of the present, going through the motions of Liam’s wake and funeral while losing herself in memories and images that are impossible to call true or false—they simply are.

With a backdrop of alcoholic siblings and a past so hurtful but so clouded, Veronica must figure out how to live in a world of tragedy and influence by learning to conceptualize both the past and the present. “The Gathering” depicts a woman struggling to make sense of it all, and reveals that perspective, no matter how flawed, is an inseparable part of who a person is.

Following the disorganized thoughts of Enright’s Veronica can be as frustrating for the reader as it appears to be for Veronica herself. But this is the point. There is no better way to portray the chaos of emotions evoked by both tragedy and monotony than to mirror that chaos with stream of consciousness-style writing. Readers may initially be lost in the impressionistic snapshots that fail to follow any sequential order, but portraying the psychological life of Veronica, or anyone for that matter, is most accurately dealt with in this manner.

People will often see a psychologist, or just talk to a trusted confidant, and let loose with a free-flowing, snapshot monologue. Simply talking about one’s life can help an individual conceptualize and better understand the confusion that is the inner life. In the same way, “The Gathering” becomes richer and more revealing when it is talked about.

None of the characters in this book are truly likable, but they are at least relatable. We might not want to be like Veronica, but close inspection of our own thoughts and memories may reveal a closer kinship with the beleaguered character than hoped for.(less)

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About Anne Enright

Anne Enright is a Booker Prize-winning Irish author.

She has published essays, short stories, a non-fiction book and four novels.

Before her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Enright had a low profile in Ireland and the United Kingdom, although her books were favourably reviewed and widely praised.

Her writing explores themes such as family relat...more

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Quotes from The Gathering

“People do not change, they are merely revealed.” — 21 people liked it

“There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick.

” — 11 people liked it

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