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The Gathering

Anne Enright

3.09 · Rating details · 20,401 ratings · 3,108 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

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Paperback, 261 pages

Published September 10th 2007 by Grove Press, Black Cat (first published March 1st 2007)

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Apr 15, 2010 karen rated it liked it

Shelves: icky-sex, it-is-for-class, 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 amazin 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

come to my blog! ...more

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Jul 14, 2015 Samadrita rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: man-booker-prize, european-literature, ireland, don-t-melt-my-melting-pot, disturbia, real-issues-fake-people, human-drama, by-women-who-matter

These words are imbued with a despair so raw that not even once during the time I was reading this did I feel an ounce of regret envisaging the time the novel drew to its inevitable conclusion. In fact I was eager for it to be over, for the narrator to stop pouring forth her endless stream of inchoate conjectures and unsavoury insinuations. Prior to this, I have slogged my way through Vollmann's 800-page behemoth (The Royal Family) which, despite its uncompromising sincerity and profound sympath These words are imbued with a despair so raw that not even once during the time I was reading this did I feel an ounce of regret envisaging the time the novel drew to its inevitable conclusion. In fact I was eager for it to be over, for the narrator to stop pouring forth her endless stream of inchoate conjectures and unsavoury insinuations. Prior to this, I have slogged my way through Vollmann's 800-page behemoth (The Royal Family) which, despite its uncompromising sincerity and profound sympathy for the dispossessed of the earth, features depravities of the highest order and I continue to do battle with Leslie Marmon Silko's righteously fiery tirade in Almanac of the Dead which takes pleasure in referencing every known and unknown stomach-churning theme under the sun simply to make the reader squirm in their seat. But somehow Anne Enright's seemingly innocuous concoction of blood bonds and family drama contains more unpleasantness than the two works combined.

I do not know the truth, or I do not know how to tell the truth. All I have are stories, night thoughts, the sudden convictions that uncertainty spawns. All I have are ravings, more like.

Every statement or harmless speculation opening a window into the narrator's world provides a disconcerting view of an emotionally repressed, traumatized individual. One who is outwardly an ordinary woman grappling with the challenges of a moderately satisfactory marriage at the sunset of her youth. A mother of two tiptoe-ing around her own life like a trespasser. But it's only her relationship with her recently deceased brother Liam which seems to give her life substance, endow it with meaning and purpose, rooting her to a particular point in time and memory from which she cannot detach herself despite best efforts. In a way she seems like a listless, disembodied spirit propelled only by the currents of happenstance, mundane daily occurrences, and passive-aggressive conversations with her siblings and ambiguous husband, always ever grazing the surface of the truth – the truth of a summer spent in her grandmother's place long ago with her brother Liam - until the time she finally shuns hesitation and divulges that closely guarded, wholly repugnant secret. A secret so complex and incomprehensible (even to its keeper) that it seems to have hijacked her life in retrospect and delineated the downward trajectory of decline and eventual self-destruction that Liam was doomed to follow.

They are a bundle of nerves, frayed at the ends. They are wearing each other away; both of them amazed by the thinness of skin that happens just there; how close they can be, blood to blood, so that the ticking, afterwards, of one inside the other, might be a joke, or a pulse-the beating in your veins of someone else's heart.

In a sense, the entire novel reads like the narrator's rambling, extended letter of apology to a brother she failed to rescue in time, both in the distant and recent past. It is piercing and earnest. Besides Anne Enright never indulges in the folly of distilling the 'issue' into easy dichotomies of 'moral' and 'immoral' but uses words – clever, cutting, precise words – to make sense of the incident which serves as the seam of the narrative. But unfortunately enough this is a particularly breed of fiction which impairs my ability to feel empathy for any of its characters, even though I'm always acutely aware of its power. There is just too much hurt, too much toxic resentment lurking between the arrays of words that seem to percolate into a reader's blood like insidious poison. Even passages sketching a commonplace scene of domestic bliss are pregnant with implications that my mind refused to parse fully out of some hazily-defined fear. The sex scenes made my skin crawl. Sometimes I felt I was going to drown in my own revulsion for this book.

People, she used to think, do not change, they are merely revealed.

And yet I cannot deny the truth of Enright's masterful unravelling of this yarn which allows the reader to partake in the shared experience of a 'free fall' that seems to have been Veronica Hegarty's life for thirty-nine years. In the end, I am unable to love but I can grudgingly admire. ...more

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Mar 16, 2008 Sammy rated it it was ok

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 you get a reader 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. ...more

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Jun 23, 2008 Brian rated it did not like 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 the next, with the basic point being "S ...more

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Apr 29, 2008 Jason Pettus rated it it was amazing · 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 imagine my surpris ...more

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Apr 09, 2017 Lyn rated it really liked it

An intelligent, insightful and thought provoking novel about an Irish family experiencing the loss of a brother and son.

Anne Enright’s 2007 novel that garnered the Man Booker Prize for that year is an enjoyable but sometimes difficult journey in the life of Veronica who has recently lost her brother. Told from the days immediately following his tragic death as well as remembrances from their life together, Enright tells Liam’s story from the perspective of Veronica, his younger sister by about 1 ...more

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Mar 24, 2008 Lisa rated it did not like 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" brother fell ...more

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Aug 06, 2014 Lisa rated it liked it

Shelves: man-booker, forgettable, meh, nice-try-but-no-cigars, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

"Because a mother's love is God's greatest joke."

This sentence would make perfect sense to me if we turned it around:

"Because a God's love is mother's greatest joke."

Religion, like family wounds and family love, is something one doesn't shake off easily, and that keeps haunting grown-up people long after they think they have left their origins behind. Even what you forget shapes what you are. And that is all I remember of this novel, which may have left more impact on me than I am aware of. But ...more

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Sep 21, 2019 Robin rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019, literary-fiction, 1001-before-you-die, booker-prize-winner, irish

I have no idea how to feel about this book, let alone rate it.

For the first half, I was in love with it. I was in love with the writing, which is exceptional, inviting, personal, painful, and *sparkling*. I was squinting with as much derision as confusion, like Clint Eastwood in all of his spaghetti westerns, at all the low ratings.

The book explores grief and the love-hate complications of a big Irish family, who get together for the funeral of Liam, a beloved brother who took his own life. Oh, I have no idea how to feel about this book, let alone rate it.

For the first half, I was in love with it. I was in love with the writing, which is exceptional, inviting, personal, painful, and *sparkling*. I was squinting with as much derision as confusion, like Clint Eastwood in all of his spaghetti westerns, at all the low ratings.

The book explores grief and the love-hate complications of a big Irish family, who get together for the funeral of Liam, a beloved brother who took his own life. Oh, and it's also about the complications of memory, a theme that is starting to feel worn out to me. I've read too many books that bemoan the inaccuracy of memory, the betrayal of recollection, the haziness of the past. And this one does that A LOT. In fact, it does that for almost the entire book.

See, the main character spends much time imagining how her grandparents got together (down to the nitty gritty of their couplings), over and over and over. Imagining the print of her grandmother's dress, imagining the erection in an onlooker's pants, and then, and then, and then. After each of these imaginings, she doubts the scene she just painted and it evaporates into nothingness, and all that is left is a broken, half-drunk, middle aged woman on her way to her brother's funeral.

Fortunately, it's a pleasure to read these imaginings, because they are so fucking gorgeous. Because you feel like it's your best friend telling you about an intimate dream while she's high on opiates. But the dream goes on so long, you're almost forced to pat your friend's hand, and say "just tell me who molested who, sweetheart, and I'll be on my way."

Because it's also about sexual abuse, and its devastating, lifelong damages, its lethal consequences.

By the time the author reveals a few pages of "reality" you may find yourself annoyed at all the musings of what might have happened when all along the narrator knew damn well what actually happened.

Or does she? The "reality" gets snatched back pretty quick, and you close the book (after a brilliant final paragraph) wondering if you know anything about that family, after all. It comes off as contrived and self indulgent, even if it pulled me in with its stunning artistry.

So this is an example of how a marvellous writer can get away with pretty much anything, solely based on her mad skills as a wordsmith. She could have stuck a few grocery lists in here and she'd still have won the Man Booker. But I predict this ethereal flight won't stick in my memory long. It will join the forgetful haze that she wrote so much about. And that seems fitting. ...more

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Apr 15, 2017 Maxwell rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned, ireland

This novel is definitely not for everyone—probably why it has such a low rating here. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. Enright examines grief, guilt, and family trauma so universally in this story, though she uses the lens of one woman, Veronica, to do so. The writing is taut but immersive, and the story unfolds slowly and builds itself back up by the end to delivering a satisfying conclusion that will keep you thinking. I found it to be a dark but not unforgiving story. And though she tackles some ...more

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May 14, 2009 Paul Bryant rated it it was ok

Shelves: novels, abandoned

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 hands on which giant gloves have been tied - she ...more

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Feb 26, 2008 Fiona Brichaut rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: the bereaved

Shelves: books-i-loved, favorites

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 everyt 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.
...more

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Apr 18, 2008 Yulia rated it did not like 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. ...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Darwin8u rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015

“I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead”
― Anne Enright, The Gathering

description

I grabbed a couple of my still unread, Irish writers to read while traveling back and forth, to and fro from Ireland for pleasure. Ha. Pleasure. The Irish know how to fuck, fight and die. Oh, and write.

Both novels centered around drownings, death, and memory. Both were Man Booker Prize winners (born two years apart). Both were very different looks back. Banville's The Sea was more po ...more

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Mar 12, 2008 Alice rated it did not like 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 what it was!!!! LOL!!!" ...more

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May 23, 2015 Julie Christine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Julie Christine by: Maureen

Shelves: ireland-theme-setting, read-2015, contemporary-fiction

The Gathering bears witness to a modern Ireland—which at the time of its publication in 2007 was the shiny, bright, roaring Celtic Tiger, an economic miracle—that cannot escape its past. It is told in a looping, troubling first-person by Veronica Hegarty, who lives an aimless existence in a detached five-bedroom home in the Dublin suburbs with her two lovely daughters and financier husband Tom. Veronica and Tom, who “moves money around, electronically. Every time he does this, a tiny bit sticks The Gathering bears witness to a modern Ireland—which at the time of its publication in 2007 was the shiny, bright, roaring Celtic Tiger, an economic miracle—that cannot escape its past. It is told in a looping, troubling first-person by Veronica Hegarty, who lives an aimless existence in a detached five-bedroom home in the Dublin suburbs with her two lovely daughters and financier husband Tom. Veronica and Tom, who “moves money around, electronically. Every time he does this, a tiny bit sticks to him. Day by day. Hour by hour. Minute by minute. Quite a lot of it, in the long run”, are the new Ireland: privileged, polished, distant, secluded.

But Veronica has come to share something of the past, a dark and dirty secret that her brother Liam’s suicide has only now brought to the light of her memory.

I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother’s house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen. I need to bear witness to an uncertain event. I feel it roaring inside me – this thing that may not have taken place. I don’t even know what name to put on it. I think you might call it a crime of the flesh, but the flesh is long fallen away and I am not sure what hurt may linger in the bones.

From this ominous beginning, Veronica meanders back to the time of her grandmother, constructing a narrative that is part family history, part “Dear Diary”—a public confessional in which you can imagine Veronica tearing at the pages with the sharp tip of her pen. Enright presents us with an articulate, reflective narrator, but one of the book’s most brilliant aspects is the instability of Veronica’s testimony – highlighting the unreliability of memory.

Veronica’s clan, the Hegarty’s, is symbolic of the old Ireland Veronica is trying to redeem. She is one of twelve siblings, the daughter of a woman who has virtually lost her mind to the physical and emotional ravages of childbearing and rearing.

My mother had twelve children and— as she told me one hard day–seven miscarriages. The holes in her head are not her fault. Even so, I have never forgiven her any of it. I just can’t.

This tells us so much about the soul of the woman who leads us into her family’s past, the volumes of sorrow and anger and shame that swell in her heart like pages of a book left out in the rain. Perhaps it is her mother’s carelessness, or reverence to a religion which treated women like brood sows that Veronica cannot forgive; but no, as she tells us, “I do not forgive her the sex. The stupidity of so much humping. Open and blind. Consequences, Mammy. Consequences.”

The consequences of which Veronica writes were borne not only by her mother but by all her siblings. Some of the Hegarty twelve passed on before Liam: Margaret, recently, of cancer; Stevie, as an angelic little boy; and the nine who remain are scattered, as if seeking roots far from the mother tree. The eponymous ‘Gathering’ is Liam’s wake and funeral, bringing them all back home again. The theme of family is at the broken heart of this novel—how our families shape and betray us—the facts of our emotional inheritances that we can never escape. But the family of Enright’s creation is so wholly Irish, without the superficial sentimentality that we would perhaps rather see, absent of the soft-focus of times past. Enright’s Irish family is flawed and brutal:

There is always a drunk. There is always someone who has been interfered with, as a child. There is always a colossal success, with several houses in various countries to which no one is ever invited. There is a mysterious sister. These are just trends, of course, and, like trends, they shift. Because our families contain everything and, late at night, everything makes sense. We pity our mothers, what they had to put up with in bed or in the kitchen, and we hate them or we worship them, but we always cry for them.

For some readers, The Gathering may have a frustrating lack of action; it is a novel of character and feelings, of reflection and observation. For me, it roared with life. Enright’s prose is sometimes alluring and gentle, sometimes a slap in the face, but it is always original, precise, the fine point of a calligraphy pen that seduces the brain.

Like Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment before her and Jill Alexander Essbaum’s recent Hausfrau, Anne Enright’s The Gathering gives voice to a woman’s anger and shows the inner workings of a mind set loose by tragedy and obsession. It is an unflinching look at sex as a weapon to be wielded and feared. A measure of redemption is offered, for even though Liam’s life was interrupted so unfairly and Veronica must live on in her uncertain world, there is hope in a new life: Liam’s son.

A brilliant novel of Ireland, of family, of memory.

...more

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Aug 30, 2013 Julie rated it it was ok

Shelves: man-booker-prize-winner, kissing-the-blarney-stone

Okay, this is what I'd label a "Toni Morrison situation." Meaning, this is a highly literary, stream-of-consciousness, well-written novel, filled with characters I don't like and can't relate to, with running themes of incest, molestation, rape, etc.

It's ironic, actually, that I cracked open this 2007 Booker Prize winner right as I've declared "no more Toni Morrison!"

I always feel a little guilty, turning my back on well-written works, but, truly, after page 35, I just couldn't continue. Frank ...more

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Sep 19, 2008 Philip rated it it was amazing

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 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 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. ...more

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Jun 02, 2012 Fionnuala added it

This is original writing. I particularly admired the way Enright circled her subject, teasing out the material until the moment was right for revelation; it takes a fierce discipline to do that well. I also liked the way she handled the first person narrative. Veronica's voice rings so true. Enright has the knack of going beyond the reader's willing suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief doesn't even come into it. All human life is in her fiction. In fact, it's not fiction at all... ...more

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Oct 27, 2007 Trevor rated it liked it

Shelves: 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 not feel that the structure wa 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. ...more

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May 30, 2012 ·Karen· rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: f2f-book-group-reads, ireland

Take Two:

I'm afraid a re-read is not going to persuade me to add a star, I still can't 'like' this, sorry.The brick wall smash arrived at exactly the same point as the first time round: page 131. Veronica muses on faith and saints, mentioning that her brother Liam liked "three Roman saints with funny names who were turned upside down and had milk and mustard put up their noses, which killed them, apparently. It didn't seem to bother Kitty, as I recall." Kitty, as one might imagine, is the little Take Two:

I'm afraid a re-read is not going to persuade me to add a star, I still can't 'like' this, sorry.The brick wall smash arrived at exactly the same point as the first time round: page 131. Veronica muses on faith and saints, mentioning that her brother Liam liked "three Roman saints with funny names who were turned upside down and had milk and mustard put up their noses, which killed them, apparently. It didn't seem to bother Kitty, as I recall." Kitty, as one might imagine, is the little sister.
Now it wasn't the use of a close family member as experimental object there that brought me up short: I found it funny, I laughed inside. But it did drive home how little delight I was getting from the reading experience, looked at the number of pages still to come and wondered if I could go on. It kind of robbed me of the will to read, which is exactly the same as the will to live in my case.

However, I heroically battled onward: and I must say that at least I have detected a couple of real themes this time. (Thank you Fionnuala). The idea of editing memory, or rather in this case creating completely fictional stories in order to deflect blame away from oneself is a thread that runs through. Perfectly natural thing that we all do to protect our valued self-image is it not? Is that a particularly Irish trait? I don't believe so.
The other thing that was quite revealing was Veronica's experience of a very large family. She is one of twelve siblings - yes, twelve. But basically she grew up as if she had two or three siblings at the very most, because she is only close in any way to those nearest to her in age. The others are just more people in the house who are likely to hit you.

Page 131, by the way, is pretty well exactly half way through. It takes another sixty one pages for the funeral to start. As in real life, the funeral provides a relief. And another forty odd pages before we realize that (view spoiler) A slow reveal. A bit too slow for me, and for several of the ladies in my book group. 'I kept waiting for the secret to come out, and then there wasn't one.' was one complaint. But maybe that is less a function of the book than the blurb on the back, which distorts it into a kind of thriller - "It wasn't the drink that killed him...it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968." I think it was the drink, myself.

Original review:

I've been assiduously avoiding this one since 2007 when it won the Booker. Lawks a mercy not another dysfunctional rambling Irish family, purleez. And coming together for that most riotous of occasions, a funeral. And a suicide's funeral at that, so lots of opportunity for incrimination. Thus you may imagine my feelings when my reading group chose it for July: my heart sags and heavy grows. The only comfort is that it was not my suggestion, so they can't blame me. But sheesh, I'm going to have to read it at least once more. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I have a huge respect for Ms Enright, there's no denying that she beats the shite out of the English language, pummelling it into submission. But to what purpose? That's what I'd like to know. I feel a bit like one of Alan Bennett's genteel elderly ladies. It's all very interesting dear, but it doesn't get you anywhere, does it?
...more

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Jul 08, 2008 K rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommended to K by: margueya

Shelves: couldntfinish, 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 psychologicall 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 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.

...more

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Oct 05, 2019 Dan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 6-star-fiction-books, man-booker-prize, irish-novel-award

The Gathering by Anne Enright

Winner of the 2007 Booker Prize.

Veronica, our protagonist, is responsible for the funeral arrangements for her troubled brother, Liam, who has committed suicide. We find this out ten pages into the novel. The police interviews, identification of the body, the wake and then the funeral is the larger event that the title of the book refers to. The surviving siblings of this very large Irish Catholic family are all adults now. Dad has passed away and mom is suffering f ...more

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Jun 11, 2013 Laura rated it did not like it

Shelves: book-club, fiction

An Irish woman's brother dies. She is obsessed with sex (or, more accurately, with penises) and mumbles to herself about something (maybe death, maybe sex, maybe family -- it's awfully hard to say) for 250 pages.

While my summary of this self-indulgent mess of a book is obviously meant to be facetious, it's not far off. Enright's narrator really doesn't have anything to say, nor does Enright give us any reason that we should want to hear her say it. We're supposed to be interested in the narrato ...more

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Feb 14, 2021 nastyako rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: irish, booker

I swear, one day I’ll find Irish literary fiction where no one is raped or molested or lives with a lot of shame! But this was not it...

This book is very similar to the other one I've read by Enright - Actress. We have a dark secret in the center of it (in both novels it's rape). And then we have a protagonist in her 40 in the middle of mental breakdown. And also there is this meandering style of writing that circles around said mystery in a delirious feverish prose and then secrets are revealed I swear, one day I’ll find Irish literary fiction where no one is raped or molested or lives with a lot of shame! But this was not it...

This book is very similar to the other one I've read by Enright - Actress. We have a dark secret in the center of it (in both novels it's rape). And then we have a protagonist in her 40 in the middle of mental breakdown. And also there is this meandering style of writing that circles around said mystery in a delirious feverish prose and then secrets are revealed.

I am a trembling mess from hip to knee. There is a terrible heat, a looseness in my innards that makes me want to dig my fists between my thighs. It is a confusing feeling – somewhere between diarrhoea and sex – this grief that is almost genital.

And I turn around again and gather the covers about me, as the thing my husband is fucking in his sleep slowly recedes. A thing that might be me. Or it might not be me. It might be Marilyn Monroe – dead or alive. It might be a slippery, plastic kind of girl, or a woman he knows from work, or it might be a child – his own daughter, why not? There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I am not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw a line.

I would love to leave my body. Maybe this is what they are about, these questions of which or whose hole, the right fluids in the wrong places, these infantile confusions and small sadisms: they are a way of fighting our way out of all this meat (I would like to just swim out, you know? – shoot like a word out of my own mouth and disappear with a flick of my tail) because there is a limit to what you can fuck and with what, Nugent opening Ada’s belly with his wicked, square fingers, delving into her cavities, taking with careful desire the beautiful lobes of her lungs and caressing – ‘Oh,’ gasps Ada, as the air rushes out of her – squeezing her pink lungs tight.

Both novels have basically the same protagonist who struggling with the same boring middle aged husband who she doesn’t love anymore and have a lot of problems with her family.
At first I thought that this story would be about an adult daughter confronting her always pregnant neglectful Irish mother who doesn't even remember all of her 12 children’s names. This was the part I was interested in. But alas.
I don't think Enright works for me, neither her style of writing, nor her stories, and unless I'll see in future reviews that she changed it up, it think I'll pass. For now I've read enough of this same sad Irish story.
...more

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Feb 03, 2009 Barb rated it did not like it

Shelves: book-club-reads, contemporary-fiction, 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 could have given the author ...more

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Feb 13, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it liked 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: bookcrossing-books, booker-prize-winner, 1001-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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Mar 08, 2011 Blair rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize, contemporary, 2000s-release, read-on-kindle

Despite all the critical acclaim this book received, I'd heard nothing but negative things from actual readers before beginning it, so I was naturally a bit apprehensive and unsure of what to expect. The story hinges around the suicide of Liam Hegarty, and is narrated by his sister Veronica; now a mother of two young daughters living a comfortable middle-class life, she is haunted by memories of her impoverished childhood in Ireland, and the narrative flips back and forth between the 'gathering' Despite all the critical acclaim this book received, I'd heard nothing but negative things from actual readers before beginning it, so I was naturally a bit apprehensive and unsure of what to expect. The story hinges around the suicide of Liam Hegarty, and is narrated by his sister Veronica; now a mother of two young daughters living a comfortable middle-class life, she is haunted by memories of her impoverished childhood in Ireland, and the narrative flips back and forth between the 'gathering' of the title (the coming together of the large Hegarty family for Liam's funeral), Veronica's recollections of her early years, and her imagined versions of scenes from the life of her grandmother, Ada.

In terms of language and theme, I absolutely loved the book. Though ostensibly centred around Liam's death and funeral, it's really a story (if it can be called a story) about family and memory. Veronica's memories unfold like descriptions of photographs, with particular details or scenes captured perfectly in her mind, but the surrounding events unclear. I thought the way the character filled in these gaps, colouring in tentatively around the definite facts, fleshing them out with whole resulting mini-sagas, only to double back on herself upon realising that a certain thing couldn't possibly have happened, was wonderful. It made me think a lot about my own memories of childhood and the way we construct and modify our personal versions of events. I also found the style of writing delightful to read. The word 'lyrical' is probably used far too frequently in book reviews (including those I've written here), but I really can't think of a better way to describe Enright's prose. Although much of the narrative wasn't really about anything in particular, I often felt like I could just read on forever, so beguiling was the language. I loved the way Enright got into Veronica's head and broke down private thoughts and behaviour, those things never witnessed by others, or examined too closely by ourselves; her reckless driving at night, her personification of the passenger seat as a companion, I related to hugely without really knowing why.

In terms of plot and characterisation, the book - for me - was less successful. I didn't dislike Veronica, but I didn't warm to her either, and I'm not sure whether I was supposed to; she is certainly a very flawed, possibly damaged, character, but not necessarily sympathetic. I didn't get a handle on her relationship with Liam, or believe in their closeness as brother and sister (there is certainly no sense of closeness between Veronica and any of her other siblings), until the story was nearly over. While the portrayal of grief and bereavement was masterful, it sometimes felt like the relationships between characters had been forgotten about; Veronica's mother seemed practically nonexistent, some of her siblings more caricatures than anything else. The book is also quite formless, and I can see why this would be off-putting to a lot of readers as it can be very frustrating, especially the sections about Ada - it's hard to know what is and what isn't the truth, or whether Veronica herself actually has any idea whatsoever what 'the truth' is. But this, again, plays into the overriding theme of the book; does the reality of events even matter, or has Veronica's memory, twisted and refashioned across the years, become more important?

Every now and again I read a book I wish I could have studied at some point, or discussed and dissected with others, as there are so many levels to it, so many different interesting aspects. This is a perfect example. Even though it's not among the very best of my personal favourites this year, I think it's a book I will probably read again at some point. I could probably go back through it and quote lines I found beautiful, inspiring, moving or queasily fascinating from almost every page. A superbly written, intense, poetic and admirable novel which I think will linger in my memory for some time. ...more

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Feb 19, 2009 Lucy rated it did not like 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, writes a confusing and mu ...more

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Nov 06, 2019 Alma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize

“People do not change, they are merely revealed.”

“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.”

“There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Reading 1001: The Gathering by Anne Enright	3	15	Jun 19, 2020 11:05PM
A potrait of a large Irish family	7	92	Apr 04, 2013 04:37PM
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. a woman who finds out/remembers a dark family secret after her brother dies [s]	2	26	Feb 15, 2012 09:08AM
The Reader's Den	1	25	Oct 05, 2009 09:23AM
Constant Reader	60	159	Mar 21, 2009 03:01PM

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About Anne Enright

Anne Enright

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Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has published three volumes of stories, one book of nonfiction, and five novels. In 2015, she was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her novel The Gathering won the Man Booker Prize, and The Forgotten Waltz won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.