An Engaging Narrator Takes You to Liam's Wake While Shrouding the Past in Mystery

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	• The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) Anne Enright Grove Press, Black Cat, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 97 reviews view larger image
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A secretive family history in very well-written prose

Veronica Hegarty is one of 12 children. When her brother Liam dies, the nine surviving children gather in the parental house for the wake. The period before, during and after the wake is described through the eyes of Veronica, who was Liam's closest sister, but even she could not save him from the drink and self-destruction that ultimately lead to his suicide. The story flips backwards and forwards between their childhood, young adulthood and the period after the death of Liam, when Veronica has to come to terms with the events from the past that led to Liam's ultimate self-desctruction. It also shows the problems that Veronica encouters in her marriage during the months after the funeral when she has to come to terms with the death of her closest brother.

The book very well describes the chemistry and behavioural patterns that rule the interaction between a whole flock of grown-ups that shared their youth ("Don't tell Mammy!"). The prose is smooth where it should be, funny at times, but can also hurt and the author is not afraid of showing both the loving and selfish sides of the main character. All in all a worthy winner of the Booker Prize.

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An Engaging Narrator Takes You to Liam's Wake While Shrouding the Past in Mystery

When a book has won a prestigious prize like the Man Booker, readers feel a double challenge: Appreciate the book for what it is and try to figure out what attracted the award panel's approval. I think the former was easier to do than the latter in this case.

Ultimately, The Gathering's subject is the difficulty with trying to pin down the truth of anything, especially things that happened long ago for which there is little or no contemporary evidence. If you've never thought much about that issue, you'll enjoy the subtle philosophical bent of the novel.

That subject is explored in the context of a sister contemplating her brother's death. Veronica Hegerty is a very vivid and appealing character: Much of the book's charm comes from seeing her family through her eyes and memories. In the process, she reveals the kind of "within the family" opinions that all family members express in whispers with one another. Beneath her grief, Veronica also feels a need to share a secret with us . . . but she feels at a loss for how to do so. Her rambling reflections gradually spiral closer and closer to that secret until you realize its full shocking lesson: People may not be who they seem to be, and you need to be careful even where there seems to be no risk.

There's an unedited quality at times in the book that captures what will remind you of the sorts of soliloquies that we've all conducted in our minds. That exposition method is very effective for making Veronica's feelings come across more strongly.

Why did the book win the award? I'm not really sure. I found that the secret wasn't so very interesting as to make the philosophical question and the writing style worth the effort. The book felt like a well decorated cake where the appearance of the icing was a lot better than the taste and freshness of the cake.

But anyone who enjoys good writing will find this book rewarding. We can all learn from a stylist like Anne Enright.

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Sometimes the Booker Prize is a Curse

I noticed that many of the most critical reviews came after Enright won the Booker Prize. Major prizes, be they Pulitzers, National Book Awards or Bookers, tend to raise expectations. The Booker has gone to a wide variety of books and writers including those writing in genre fiction like mysteries and it's easy to forget that an award panel isn't going choose a crowd pleaser or satisfy many readers' expectations for great fiction.

"The Gathering" uses stream of consciousness to tell the story of a family, in the context of the narrator's organizing the funeral for her beloved, but rather marginal brother Liam. The book owes a lot to Joyce, and Delillio, as well as Saul Bellow. The book crosses the pious, repressed Ireland of old and newer more cosmopolitan and secular country. I suspect that even Irish readers would have appreciated more explanation of how one Ireland so quickly evolved into the other. The lack of context detracts from the book and, in places, makes it seem like any number of book that cross generational lines during times of great social change. The book will annoy those who wish for a bucolic Ireland with peat fires where people sound like Maureen O'Hara or Pat O'Brien characters from old movies. It probably also won't please those from Scots-Irish or English strains of Protestantism for whom Irish Catholicism is part of deep, abiding prejudices. Instead, it's a less romantic Ireland, but a place that still has a distinctly Irish character.

The story is a familiar one--a large family with a diversity of "characters". The mother is long suffering and a little depressed as well as pharmacologically addled. The father seems mostly absent and critical. The story is "serious business" but filled with very funny observations on traditional Catholic families (e.g., the gossipy commentaries on the number of children in a family) and digs at the British. The book's climax is a revelation about Liam's childhood which the narrator sees as the cause of his aimless, underachieving life. This, unfortunately, is the weakest aspect of the book and Enright seems to know it, as she makes only a few references back to it later in the story. The revelation is something that is pretty common place (esp. in dysfunctional family fiction) and doesn't necessarily lead to much of anything in real life. That Liam had been seduced into it may reflect his already steady trend toward slackerhood.

Enright is a very talented writer and I was quickly engrossed in the story, despite its familiarity. Her narrator is not the most avuncular of people, but hardly an unlikely or unlikable person. There are aspects of the story that could use more depth--Veronica's marriage and the character of her dimly capitalist husband, the changing social context of Ireland, and the tedious "climax"--but these are easy to shrug off because of the quality of the writing. It has flaws and will violate certain assumptions about Irish fiction or linear story telling, but this is a solid book and it held my interest on a long trans-Pacific flight that had begun a little too early in the morning.

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The Gathering Review

A mixture of graphic scenes, peculiar language, and strong culture, The Gathering by Anne Enright is a mysterious classic that keeps the reader guessing. A story about a woman named Veronica searching for the cause of her brother Lima's suicide within her own families past, begins to learn how these events affected her life just the same. Veronica's journey through time is truly remarkable and shows how the past never dies, even when you want it to. The past is always there, haunting you at every moment. Enright's use of strong language and Irish culture often made it quite difficult to follow. Its as if she takes you on a blind journey, which causes the reader to get lost in events. Her stream of consciousness writing style adds a personal spin to the novel that allows the reader to truly get inside the story. The author seems to be quite pessimistic, butAlthough the author's obscene writing and abundant discussion of sex makes the reading harsh, Enright's literary ability makes up for it, making it one of the best reads that I have ever read.

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Raw but riveting...

This story gives the reader an up close and personal view of one woman's grieving process. It is raw, because grief is raw. The story is disjointed and at times erratic, because grief can be disjointed and erratic. I think this book is brilliant. The author takes you through the hurricane of grieving, takes a few momnets of respite in the eye, and then catapults the reader back into the storm. The author makes it very clear at the end that the reader has been given nothing more than the narrator's grief. If at times it is jolting to accept the rawness of the descriptions or reconcile the narrator's hostile take on the world, it is because the reader is not experienceing the narrator's entire life expereice, only the grief. To be able to spotlight this emotion, so often trivialized or alternatively aggrandized, Enright gets it just right. Like I said, brilliant.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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 Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, drowned in the sea. His sister, Veronica, collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him?something that happened in their grandmother?s house in the winter of 1968. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations her distinctive intelligence twists the world a fraction and gives it back to us in a new and unforgettable light. The Gathering is a daring, witty, and insightful family epic, clarified through Anne Enright?s unblinking eye. It is a novel about love and disappointment, about how memories warp and secrets fester, and how fate is written in the body, not in the stars.

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