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The Gathering
by Anne Enright
by Anne Enright
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.
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.
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Lisa (scarlet21)
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rated it 3 stars
Feb 16, 2011 10:17am
But that's life,the relationships between siblings IS sporadic and bitty and I think the point is that none of them really cared for each other. IN her stream of consciousness, Veronica explores all this. It was the ramblings of a woman maddened by grief and the what-ifs of a life gone by - and I think we all have them. I read it twice and have to say, the second time I enjoyed, or appreciated is probably more apt, the second time.
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