The Gathering
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Constant Reader
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Sherry
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rated it 4 stars
Apr 29, 2008 10:05AM
Let's start discussing this on October 15, 2008.
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Just thought I'd post this to bring the Constant Reader discussion thread up where it is visible. Plans are afoot already to reverse this so the most recently active things are at the top but meanwhile we can "bump" when need be.I finished this some time back and I'm really looking forward to the discussion here.
i shoul star5 the discussion on thiis - but i'm typing left handed - terrble case of rotatorb cuff tendfinitis. i may not be an\ble to type well enough to start - would smebody like to step in for me ?
I'm so glad I came across this thread in time. I'm going to see if my husband can pick it up for me from the library...he brought me dinner in bed tonight, complete with napkin. This book would make for a perfect, snuggly evening.
Karey,I've just started this - I'm not sure I'd describe what I've read so far as making for a 'perfect, snuggly evening.' But I'm disciplined for the long haul.
Just finished and looking forward to the conversation!
I volunteered to start the discussion, even though I gave the book only two stars. I would like to say that my note is full of spoilers, because this is a discussion and not a review.I thought I was going to love this book after the first two pages. I loved the description of Liam finding the bones of the dead animals, and I loved the mystery of the first paragraph: "this thing that may not have taken place".
What I didn't like was the main character, Veronica. Was she bitter because of what happened (or may not have happened) to Liam or was the bitterness caused by Liam's death? She had no respect for her mother or her grandmother. She was alienated from her husband and became alienated from her daughters. How could she spend her time imagining that her grandmother was a prostitute? Later she decided that it wasn't true, but I thought maybe she got some satisfaction of imagining this because she blamed her grandmother for what happened to Liam. She seemed to blame her parents for sending her to the grandparents' home. She just seemed miserable, and I felt miserable reading the book.
Shall I tell you how I really feel??
Jane
All good fiction is character-driven. I know that's an arbitrary statement. But it's nearly always true. Every character in this book is enigmatic to the point of being a shadow. I want to know more about Veronica and Liam. Never in this reading did I give a damn about Ada and Charlie and Lamb Neugent. When the story began to dwell on Ada in that ponderous chapter of the hotel lobby with the lighting of the gas-lamps and the maid who climbs the stairs with a teapot again and again as in a cuckoo clock I sensed I was in trouble. The reader of this book works hard to meet Ms. Enright half-way and is rewarded with a foggy arrangement of maybees and probablies. Why were the three kids farmed out to Grandma's? I don't know. Maybe I missed it. There were countless other "mysteries" that were left hanging. Reading this book I was constantly screaming at the author: Dammit tell the story!
When you decide to write a stream of consciousness novel, you basically forgo plotting and wrapping up loose ends. What you get in return is the opportunity to wrap the reader up in the intimate life of a character.To me the trade off was worthwhile here. I like guessing at the unresolved areas, and I was completely taken with Veronica, disagreeable as she was.
Why were the kids staying with their grandmother? My guess is because their parents couldn't afford to support them themselves or perhaps Mammy wasn't in condition to cope with the whole brood.
Was this a stream of consciousness novel? I never really thought of it that way.
Oh, I see it as definitely stream of consciousness. It's Veronica's voice talking in her own head going over and over the things from the past -- far and near past. The near past being the suicide and her own recent activity in retrieving the body of the beloved and yet distanced Liam and her distance from her family is magnified as she goes through this retrieval and the resultant immersion in the past as she unravels the tangled mass that her family was and the hidden knots and breaks which led to its scattered existences.In large families in many places younger children or certain children would be sent to live with relatives -- grandparents or aunts and uncles. My father's half sister was sent to live with an aunt and uncle when her father remarried and had his second family -- perhaps because the new wife did not want the girl around as a reminder that she was wife number two or perhaps for other family related reasons -- all are dead now who could say for sure. It was not odd, actually quite common.
Jim -- we certainly are wrapped in Veronica's life throughout this tale.Kenneth -- I can't see how one cannot care about Ada and Charles and Lamb -- they are at the very heart of all that is behind the train of thought which is set in motion with Liam's suicide -- Veronica's laying out the details as she knows or has heard or has"felt" them over the lifetimes of this family -- over her own time within it. If Ada and Charles had been as they should have been or if Charles had not intervened or entered Ada's life -- if they had not included or at least not excluded Lamb from their life -- if, if, if. And whatever did or did not happen -- to whomever the thing which did or did not happen may have happened is a huge point and one which I think Enright leaves to the reader to decide and which I have not decided nor likely will. What I did decide was that this event would not have evolved had Ada and Charles been made of different "stuff" and had either one of them not gone along with life including Lamb Nugent.
Wow, I knew when I finished this that it had been a real one, two punch but even with the book in someone else's hands or sitting quietly on the library shelf -- just thinking about it again has me totally embroiled again in Veronica's musings.
As for her own life with her husband -- there I believe is the simple fact of a marriage which is going along and from without and within looks okay but within sees the "warts" beginning to change or to appear more obvious -- Veronica is doubting herself, who she is now and how she got there in part from her present and in part from the long look back which she is taking as a result of dealing with her brother's death.
I loved this book as much for Enright's language as anything else. She put words together in original ways, allowing me to think about or see things from a different perspective.I think it was stream of consciousness as well, while she pulled layer after layer off of the events from her past. It made me think of all the family stories that my brother, sister and I have told each other over the years, just accepting them until we stop and ask questions. The family myths aren't all so pat any more. I think that's what Veronica was doing.
I think the narration is very important. Veronica tells us (page 2) that she does not tell the truth nor does she know how to tell the truth. I don't ever remember being told up-front that a narrator is unreliable. The seeds of my brother's death were sown many years ago. The person who planted them is long dead. "Seeds" is a telling word when we think about the molestation scene (whether real or imaginary)that takes place much later. In telling Liam's story she begins in 1925. This is the moment I choose. This is the moment she "chooses" to begin building her case against Lamb (interesting name)Nugent as the one most responsible for Liam's death. While he is described, at 23, as a decent man, he is shown leering (with an erection) at a beautiful woman for a very long time. Of course V can not have known about most of this, especially of Lamb's physical condition.In a another leap of her imagination (unless we are to believe that the author has substituted a reliable independent narrator in situations like this) we see Lamb in his flat on his knees praying. Suddenly we are streaming through Lamb's consciousness (while listening to V?). We go back in his mind to when he was a boy praying while his sister lay dying (must've been around 1915). While he prays we are told about His own puberty going unnoticed... as her little breasts swelled under the nightdress... the nipples like a spreading bruise). And the chapter concludes with a paragraph depicting Lamb with penis in hand (it feels like her skin). Because in those days, people used to be mixed up together in the most disgusting ways.
The suggestion of incest is inescapable. A brother and a sister very close in age. Ring any bells? Is Veronica trying to tell us something? Or is it merely another calculated brick in her case against Lamb?
Not only is the incest question raised regarding Lamb and his sibling but I agree, it raises the question of Veronica and Liam as you say. they were close in age and close admittedly and they were also in their grandparents' care with a younger sibling who required greater attention perhaps. The two escaped together a great deal of the time, didn't they? As relative to the Lamb and Liam scene -- what about the Ada, Charles and Lamb relationships? Ada and Charles raise their family with Lamb apparently a constant in their life -- I had some thought that Charles and Lamb used Ada as a cover although indication is given that it was Ada and Lamb who strayed together, it seemed almost to add to that opposite idea in my opinion.
questins of sexual improprieties aside, would you say that the underlying framewrk here is not only the unreliability of memory, but the unreliability of th stories we tell ourselves?
Absolutely! And as I point out from time to time -- even when two people are in the same place and same event -- there are two divergent stories which come out of that. It's simply not possible for it to be otherwise.
It's also about what are the stories or versions of stories which we allow ourselves to know/believe in order to live the life we are trying to live. I think this is what pulled me so deeply into this book.
Exactly! The uncertainty in this book that can be annoying is the uncertainty of those stories in our lives. We give ourselves absolutes, not only about our own experience but about the family myths that have been passed down to us. When we begin to question them or pose other possibilities, we give ourselves the alternate realities that the narrator posed here. Do we ever know if we have peeled off the layers of the onion to find the real core? Or, is it all just mist?
Barb and all,I certainly agree that we all see things differently and that the narrator in this book is a good example of this point. That is a good thing about the book. What I didn't like was how negative Veronica was about her family. She views her mother with scorn because she didn't practice birth control. What do the rest of you think about Veronica as a person? The mother, as seen by Veronica, is a vague person. "Some days I don't remember my mother", she says, even though her mother is still living.
Jane
But Jane, even if there is a wonderful, strong woman in the role of mother in a person's life, from many points of view, one child within that family may have a view of the mother that is to a great degree in opposition to the accepted views. The woman may be a capable housekeeper even a fanatical one, a gracious hostess, a perfect Halloween costume making, lunch-packing, whatever the criteria -- and still for one of her children fall short of being able to provide what that child needs of her. It's all about perspective. Veronica is an adult and a mother herself -- she is looking at her mother as the mother of her lifetime and she is saying that she doesn't really recall her mother as her mother, she isn't able to lay hold of the mothering done by that woman as it relates to her own childhood or the memories of that childhood which she retains.Barb -- there may be only enough concrete to a story to say it was on this particular occasion or date-- from there it becomes mist in most instances -- at least that's my opinion.
I am so glad I read this book, even though it left me quite sad at first and unwilling to weigh in here right away.I like Dottie's stream of consciousness perspective, though I would add that Veronica's stories seem to be attempts at creating, or re-creating a reality that she hopes now she can manage. She proposes various scenarios to herself that we watch unfold, and we see and feel how she responds to these possibilities. Veronica is using the technique of positing narratives to explain her family and herself.
The shock of Liam's death -- sudden, not unexpected -- forces and permits her to reconfigure her life. All is now uncertain. She imagines her grandparents meeting and all the rest. She is not posing mysteries to be solved by the reader so much as she is spinning meaning out of the tangled strands of her life.
I found the book to be powerful, sad, and true.
Yes, powerful, sad & true which is why I read it, hearing good reviews. I almost stopped with the Ada stuff, it wasn't until the end of the book that I appreciated the beginning, but I continued because I'm the mother of 6 children & have noticed how the kids accounts about events differ, & their opinions of relatives now long passed. And it doesn't stop - those seeds we sow just keep growing - sometimes it's frightening & often sad, the way things turn out - so different from what we expected. My oldest daughter loved & read & re-read a series of books called "The Happy Hollisters" who also had 6 kids & my youngest daughter still watches re-runs of "The Brady Bunch" & "The Waltons." My 2nd.d son however, is completely into "the 3 stooges."I think "The Gathering" is true to life, & while I didn't always care for Veronica I understand her opinions of what happened with Liam (though I didn't always agree with her view of her mother).
Oh, Philip, I agree -- Veronica takes us through all the various components many times over in her struggle to pin down her life and grasp the ends which will allow her to reweave and bind the fragments into a whole from which she can move forward -- wherever she decides she must move. I liked your idea of strands as you can see -- it fits perfectly -- she is taking the most minute and at times seemingly insignificant details and extrapolating out to see if there is a path which becomes clear -- if this is what happened then did this follow or did this follow from another event instead? It is spinning a thread to follow out of her maze -- the labyrinthine tangle into which Liam's death though it was not perhaps unexpected as you point out despite the sudden aspect. Just as a thread forms from combining fibers, Veronica is combining the fibers she has gathered over time to give herself a path which will somehow lead her to wholeness.I liked your idea of positing narratives to explain her self and the others -- she's voicing theories and trying them, testing them seeing which can hold her weight.
Marian -- i have one sister and while we are three years apart in age, it even so freshly astounds me from time to time to realize how different her life in our family was compared to the life I recall when I meander back through my own memories.
In the early stages of this novel Veronica is nothing less than a beast. Can we stop sugar-coating it? Jane-- your concerns about V's negativity toward her family are well founded. But saying she is negative is like saying Bin Laden has a mild aversion to the U.S. She is at this point consumed by hatred for her family, her history, herself. If she could push a button and blow up the entire world she would. She likens childbirth to a bowel movement. She doesn't view her mother with scorn for not using birth control but for having any children at all, specifically herself. I do not forgive her the whole tedious litany of... and she proceeds to list the names of her siblings... The miscarriages might have got numbers like 1962 or 1964...I don't forgive her those dead children either. A tedious litany-- not just human beings but her own family! Being in the house of her childhood makes her gag. It is the smell of us. She and Liam came out of her on each other's tails; one after the other, as fast as a gang-bang.... Note the bestial reference of "tails." Phillip-- you say that "she is not posing mysteries to be solved by the reader so much as she is spinning meaning out of the tangled strands of her life." You make her "spinning" sound terribly noble. And I'm certain that it speaks to your generous heart. Maybe I'm just a hopeless ......!
Dottie-- You see V in a "struggle to pin down her life and grasp the ends which will allow her to reweave and bind the fragments into a whole from which she can move forward..." How is she trying to move forward with all this invective?
At the risk of belaboring a point: on page 2 she tells us that she is a spin-doctor,she speaks of her inability to tell the truth. She can't handle the truth (cheap shot!). It's entirely possible that her "spinning" is not noble at all, that she knows more than she's telling. For me she's not passing the smell-test.
Boy, that's harsh, Kenneth. I didn't find her beastly, I found her honest. She was only thinking to herself after all, and she was disgusted with life. She was trying to tease meaning out of a cacophony of experiences. I can imagine being angry with a mother who was so vague and helpless. She had to grow herself up; she had no help except maybe Liam (and we aren't sure how much help he really was--maybe a hindrance). Her grandmother was a strong force, but a mysterious one, too. We need mothers to protect and love and shelter and be forcefully for us. Veronica did not have that. But she does have a forceful personality--one that in the long-run I appreciated. She loved her beautiful daughters after all and returned to them.
Very interesting discussions here. I'm sorry to disagee with most, but I also found Veronica to be excessively involved with herself and her feelings and completely unable to consider others' lives as, um, independent from the effect that those lives had on her. I found the sexual references, for the most part, to be both gratuitous and degrading. It seemed to me to be a derivative, weeping-in-my-whiskey tale of how horrible it was to have grown up in a large family in Ireland.On the other hand, I found the idea that V. had to rethink and rethink and reinterpret her views of reality very intriguing. That was a new form of story for me, and I enjoyed that part of it.
Sherry -- yes, honest, but I'm going to give Kenneth his beastly moniker because I can see that. And yes these thoughts are inner but I'm pretty sure that this turmoil had its impact on her dealings with her family members during this period when everyone is bringing their own set of problems back into the small space of family.But Sherry -- you are also right on target -- Veronica is forceful. I'm pretty sure she wasn't always forceful in ways that were good for her overall and that is part of what I see changing once she's back in focus.
Harking back to an earlier comment -- motherless children are not the only children who feel motherless -- and even those who have good mothering at some point need more mothering than any mother is capable of giving and must mother themselves at that point -- some must to one degree or another mother themselves from the start. Veronica's resentment toward the dozen plus pregnancies does not come as a shocking idea nor even a surprise -- there is a great degree of normalcy in that feeling. And again -- this is an internal self-dialogue we are listening in on.
Where is it written that someone like Veronica who has all of those "facts" concerning her family past and present swirling about in her mind as she is in the throes of deep grieving for the one sibling to whom she related will be rational, kind, positive? I did not intend to imply she is a pleasant character -- I am only seeing that all that vituperative searching is set off by overwhelming grief and guilt -- some of which she rightly and perhaps wrongly lays at the doorsteps of the ancestors near and far.
She hates everything at the point when we are introduced. It isn't pretty to fall into that many pieces at a time when holding together is what is expected to some degree by most families and while her family didn't seem to hold those expectations to a great degree I think there was mention of this idea. She is functioning (just barely) but she is not really present nor is she her usual self.
The remark made on page two set the stage for the telling of this story perfectly. Veronica is not alone in being a spin doctor. Veronica is certainly not alone in that family in not being able to handle the truth -- in fact she may be the one who is coming closest to being at peace with some of the truths which others have glossed over through time.
Those threads she's trying to untangle are the result of spin-doctoring by each and every member of the family over entire lifetimes. Those "facts" whichever way they have been turned are what gives a glimpse of the Veronica who was before all of this vile grief washed her off the shaky foundation she had managed and they are also, as she examines them and puts them back together, what gives us a glimpse of where Veronica may be once she recovers.
I didn't particularly like or dislike Veronica, but I don't think that you need to like her to value the writing. I don't need to like a character to like a book. But, I agree with Sherry that she was simply being as honest as she knew how to be in her attempt to ferret out the past.I also had no problem about her feelings about her mother. My mother came from a family of 12 and she hated it when I told people about it. I had just read Cheaper by the Dozen and thought her story might be the same. She hated how little she felt she was valued in that big number and thought that other people would assume that she came from impoverished beginnings. In fact, she and her brothers and sisters were frequently kicked out of the house in their early teens, left to make their way on their own. In Veronica's case, she and her brother were shipped off, probably because finances were tight. And, now, her mother can't even remember her daughter's name!
I agree with you, Barb, that it's not necessary to like a character in order to like a book. That said, I didn't dislike Veronica at all. She was spinning these tales to herself, after all, she needed to be brutal in order to discover the reality behind the mess. Not much different than spilling it out on the couch of the shrink. If these feelings are there, they need to be taken out and examined before one can make peace with them.
Dottie, thanks for following up on my strands and threads metaphor so well!Kenneth, shouldn't we respond to Veronica's turbulence and emotional state in large part as cathartic in the wake of Liam's death? Thus it is experienced in exaggerated forms.
Gail, I found the sexual references disturbing, possibly degrading as you put it, but not gratuitous, since Veronica seems so focused on the state of bodies in her thoughts about Liam and her family. She is quite aware of her own feelings and perhaps she sees her husband's dream state arousal in Chapter 20 (for example) as further reason to feel estranged from him and from sex. Her extreme and to my mind unlikely fantasies about what might be Tom's focus in his dream are at least in part an expression of her pain.
Kenneth,Your view of Veronica matches my own. I was just now looking through the book trying to find one of the pages where Veronica talks about her sexual experiences and refers to her "meaty c***". I couldn't find it, but I did find chapter 19. In that chapter, Veronica speaks of sewing her fingers together, stabbing her thigh with needles and also stabbing her thigh with a pen when she was a bit older. She is filled with self-hatred, and she doesn't seem to like anyone including her daughters.
My father also came from a family of twelve, and he adored both of his parents. Maybe it was because he grew up on a farm and the children all felt necessary to the family because they all had chores. In one of the many education classes that I took, we discussed how the role of children changed when we moved from an agrarian society to an industrial one. Children no longer feel that they are needed if they aren't helping the family survive. They feel alienated, so they get into trouble. It made for some good discussions. Veronica obviously didn't see the need for 12 extra mouths to feed.
Jane
Sherry, I don't think V hates her mother for being a bad Mom so much as for bringing her, Veronica, into this world in the first place. The self-hatred is palpable. Her beloved brother has died and she is engulfed in grief. Dottie has written about overwhelming grief and guilt. I'd be curious, Dottie, to explore with you what possible guilt might be going on (beyond the guilt of surviving her sibling).Phillip, Veronica should not get a pass because of her grief. Adults lose loved ones all the time without becoming category 5 misanthropes.
Jane, I'd forgotten about the "cutting." It happens when she is a kid living with Ada and it repeats itself during her relationship with Michael Weiss. There is also, on page 88, a rather lame attempt at suicide while with Michael. She seemed to relish sleeping with a Jew in order to punish her family. She clearly was on a rocky road all the way. The heart of the book, for me, is to discover the roots of her all-consuming guilt.
Barb-- You're absolutely right that one doesn't need to like a character to like a book. And I value the writing, the prose, immensely. Discussing this book with you guys has made me reconsider my opinion of the book. I appreciate it much more. I like Gail's take that it's a weeping-in-my-whiskey tale. What I dislike the most about the book is here:
... it is true that I am attracted to people who suffer, men who suffer, my suffering husband, my suffering brother, the suffering figure of Mr. Nugent. It is unfortunately true that happiness in a man, does not do it, for me.
I'm a recovering Boston Irish Catholic (the altar boy who got away!) and I resent dragging V's rugged bloody cross through the pages of this book. Alas, my confession. Penance anyone?
Thanks, Kenneth, that's a perfect citation for how I felt reading the book...Veronica is just so depressed and miserable that she's isolated herself emotionally from her family, whether it's her birth family or her husband and girls. And isn't that what she so resented in her mother: her mother's withdrawal into whatever coccoon she had found to protect herself from her own life? And now Veronica is repeating the pattern.Yes, she hates herself...and quite often those who hate themselves hate everyone else as well; they just can't help it. I know people react in different ways, and are entitled to their reactions. Still, I was completely put off by this book. I, too, resented watching V. dragging her cross (great image, Kenneth) and finally was just repelled by the entire thing. If she had a more concrete idea of what had happened I would have felt differently. But all that business about "maybe it was this way, or maybe it was that way, or even maybe over here, this was it..." ugh. And the projections she made onto her grandmother...which seemed to be belied by the letters from Nugent; well, I don't know. Just unsatisfactory to me.
Kenneth, your last paragraph has me chuckling. I'm not a Catholic, was raised in a Protestant church, but without much guilt. I'll forever be grateful to my mother's rather progressive religious ideas for that. However, I don't generally like books that read as you, and others, describe this one. I can't figure out why I liked it so much and I think it comes down to the language. Again, (I know I've said this repeatedly), I loved the way Enright puts words together. Someone somewhere quoted the following paragraph in their review (I thought it was Philip, but can't find it), but I think it's worth repeating:And what amazes me as I hit the motorway is not the fact that everyone loses someone, but that everyone loves someone. It seems like such a massive waste of energy - and we all do it, all the people beetling along between the white lines, merging, converging, overtaking. We all love someone, even though they will all die. And we keep loving them, even though they are not there to love any more. And, there is no logic or use to any of this, that I can see.
That, in itself, was worth the book to me.
And that's what a book is about...you can hate the character (I mean, who loves Humbert?), but if the book sings for you, then it's all worth while. I'll try her again, and hope for a better reaction on my part.
Barb, I jumped ahead of the discussion and posted that in the "Favorite Quotations" thread about a week ago. One of the things I love about that passage (alluding here to yet another discussion of translated literature) is how the visual pun or "loving" or "losing" someone works so powerfully.
Kenneth and Gail, I wonder whether (if I'm right that Veronica's spinning out these stories, giving voice to extreme feelings of hurt, betrayal, and misplaced trust is cathartic) she will be re-emerging with a more balanced point of view. That's how I read the book or heard her voice.
One of the many moments from the book that I loved was Veronica's memories of Liam's letters from western Ireland where he went to the Gaeltacht. Gaeltacht is in western Ireland and students go to these schools in the summer to learn and use the Irish language which was outlawed by the English when there occupied the country. I've visited western Ireland twice and have been fascinated by this nationally supported practice. However, this note is so typical of an adolescent boy:'Meanwhile,' he writes from Gweedore, the year he was fourteen, 'we get numb bums from sitting on the beach and not drinking vodka or "bhodhca" as it is called here. Billy Tobin got sent back up for speaking English so Michael and me have developed a way of speaking English as if it is actually Irish which is great fun and not very comprehensible. Iubhsaid try it iurselgh some time.'
Barb and Phillip have given us a beautiful passage to think about. And it's not good because it's pretty (which it is) but because it is us, it's our journey...."beetling along between the white lines" while loving someone who will die. In a way the white lines are a prison..... possibly so is the love. It's a neat, swift take on being shipwrecked here: we're blessed and screwed.Phillip, your reading is right-on since Veronica does emerge whole (or somewhat whole). She begins to heal. She looks to children and the future. The sudden emergence of Liam's son as a healing component may be a bit of a cheap shot but oh well.
Gail-- As far as trying her again, she has just brought out a book of short fiction. My first reaction was "no thanks" but this discussion has me thinking I might have another go at Enright-- especially in the "short" run.
Gail,You have certainly expressed my thoughts about the book. And Barb and Philip, that is a wonderful quote, but I don't feel that Veronica loves anyone. At least, she hasn't had good feelings about anyone recently. When Liam would visit her, she couldn't wait for him to leave. The only spark I see in her is when she sees Rowan. Since he is the spitting image of Liam, she thinks that she can start all over again. At the end, she wants to start with a new baby instead of taking care of her many, many problems.
Jane
I also loved the writing, mostly because of the "feel" of the book. Veronica's resentment is almost palpable. There are nine surviving siblings, but Veronica is the one who has to bring back Liam's body and make the arrangements. She must be the rock for the family, a role that she has been playing for quite some time. Other than the Irish Catholic connections, Veronica's family and my family bear no resemblances. My own experience is that problematic behaviors are only exaggerated during these family trials, such as wakes. Her anger and resentment didn't surprise me or put me off, and I bought into whatever she wanted to tell me. It didn't matter to me that she might be an unreliable narrator.Thanks for the passage, Barb and Phillip. My personal favorite is on the previous page:
There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest. And the girls will be picked up from school, and dropped off again in the morning. Your eldest daughter can remember her inhaler, and your youngest will take her gym kit with her, and it is just as you suspected - most of the stuff that you do is just stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy even to love you, even that, let along find their own shoes under their own bed; people who turn and accuse you - scream at you sometimes - when they can only find one shoe.
What a great rant!
I loved that one too, MAP.
Well, I finally finished reading it. And I am surprised at how much I did like it. Stream of conscience narrations are not something I usually get into, but I found the writing beautiful. More yet, there is freshness on Enright’s prose. Not once I remember reading a cliché in this book, and some passages are truly memorable (both Barb and MAP give great examples of it) And I am a sucker for good writing. I certainly would not mind to read more of her work. I also don’t want to repeat much of was already discussed, as I don’t think I have anything great to add there. But I do want to ask about the unreliable narrator (this has been in my mind for a while). What if nothing really happened at Ada’s house? What if it is all a fabrication? After all, blaming her angst and hatred, and her family’s dysfunction, in some distant and already dead person is a great way out, isn’t it? I am not saying that Veronica’s hurts were unreal – poverty, emotional abandonment, disconnect… are all very real - but suddenly she finds a excuse for her mother, her grandmother, even Liam’s suicide, in one person. Can one person, as evil as only a child molester could be, really impart so much on the destiny of 3 generations?
I want to rephrase my last question. I do believe that the scars of child abuse could pass on through generations. But can all the dysfunction and hurt in one family be blamed on one single person?
It has also occurred to me that poor Lamb Nugent might have been completely innocent of all charges. Maybe instead of being a Lamb, he was a scape Goat, appointed by Veronica to bear the burden of what has happened to her. He is conveniently dead and gone, and there is no genetic connection between him and the rest of the family.Nothing may be as it seems in this book, yet everything could be as it seems.
Something else that I wonder about this book is the raw sexuality. I know that both Phillip and Gail mentioned it before, and like Phillip I don’t think it was gratuitous, although it bothered me – and I am not a prude by any measure of the word. I wondered if there was something cultural about it. Maybe the Irish are more graphic about sexuality than North Americans, or even Latino cultures, like my own. Maybe someone with knowledge about it would explain more to us all.But, I sense that it is more than culture. I think Veronica perceives sex as a power play. And a power play where men have the upper hand. A power play where she is the loser, even before it started. If I doubt the whole credibility of Veronica as a narrator, her almost disgust as she talks about sex/sexuality makes me believe that she herself was molested as a child, or that she did see her brother being molested.
Then there is also Liam’s homosexuality. And maybe the homosexuality of other siblings. Veronica senses it, but never quite come out and deals with it. I don’t understand the weight of it in the 1970’s in Catholic Ireland. But even in her stream of consciousnesses – a very private and isolated place to wonder – Veronica, who is very brave in scrutinizing other characters, never goes deep enough to wonder if this could be at the root of Liam’s suicide. She barely hints at it, and leaves up in the air that this too could have been “caused” by Lamb Nugent.
Actually the traditional Irish culture is far LESS graphic about sex than any other culture I can think of. Remember our discussion about 'The Country Girls?" that book was banned in Ireland as were many of James Joyce's works because of the sexual content. If an Irish writer wants to proclaim his/her renounciation of traditional Irish values all they need to do is add a scene or two of "explicit sex." In this day & age, the rest of the British Isles are not particulary impressed with the addition of sexual content. Yet I believe that in this story, Liam may indeed have been seduced by Lamb and the sexual content is an important part of the narrative. Ms. Enright is an "enlightened" writer & has more in common with the modern states of the British Isles. Yet much of the impetus of the story lies in the background of tradional Irish values that had surrounded the characters all their lives.
Capitu and Marian:Yes, I think Irish culture is quite reticent when it comes to matters sexual. Enright's use of sexual images is not quite in accord with that culture.
But that isn't what bothered me about the references. What disturbed me was the equating of sexual themes with, as I saw it, brutality or just a form of sordid commercialism. (I'll do this or that, you take something off the rent.) I don't recall any gentleness or, dare I say it, love, or even affection combined with sex. All we see is Veronica's disgust with the whole process. Is this a result of abuse, her own or observed? Maybe. But I was very unhappy with her imagined scenarios involving her grandmother. They seemed to have been based on nothing but her own overheated anger. I don't know: this book bothers me.
Perhaps, Capitu, you are right and sex is equated somehow with power. Being powerless means that one is likely to become a sexual victim. I mean, even in one's own family circle.
Ruth, what I sort of liked about the book was that the reader was never sure...and I'll bet Veronica is never really sure, either...just what really happened, and what was only imaginary. That's kind of spooky and memorable.
Capitu, Marian, and Gail,Veronica seems to be a person who is in a lot of pain. She shows this by her attitude toward sex, and you have all mentioned the brutality of her viewpoint, and by the act of cutting herself. This part reminded me of the main character in THE BOOK OF SALT. He would cut himself to prove that he was alive. If I remember correctly, he was the Vietnamese cook of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Like many servants, he was an important part of the household without actually being considered part of the "family". He was an outsider in the sense that Veronica seems to be an outsider in her own family. There was a gentleness about the cook that Veronica certainly lacks, but he was very much in pain.
As usual, the discussion here has made me delve more deeply into the book than I would had I read it on my own. Thank you to all of you!
Jane
Excellent connection, Jane, I'd forgotten the cook cutting himself -- he was as you say as lone a figure as Veronica is though she is surrounded by blood family and he by emploers and the mysterious stranger.
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