The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)

Anne Enright

Edition	Paperback
List Price	$14.00
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Published by	Grove Press, Black Cat
Release date	2007-09-10
ISBN	0802170390
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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.

Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Pretty early on in The Gathering you realize that in her lingering portrait of the Hegarty clan (and this isn't hyperbole--they are a family of 12), Irish novelist Anne Enright will wrestle with all the giant literary tropes that have come before her. Family, of course, is the big one, but with equal intensity she explores death and dying, the sea and its siren song, sex, shame, secrecy, unreliable memories, madness, "the drink," and--always in the shadows--England. That said, it's not like any other novel about the Irish that I've read. The story of the Hegartys is indeed bleak, and hard, but it surges with tenderness and eloquent thought which, in the end, are the very things that help this family (or at least her narrator Veronica) survive. Through her eyes, and in Enright's skillful imagination, those small turning-point moments of life that we all know in some form or another--a petty fight, a careless word, an event witnessed--come together in an unshakeable vision of how you become the person you are. --Anne Bartholomew

Customer Reviews - courtesy of Amazon.com ( Marked4Sale.com is not responsible for review content )

The gathering of dispersive thoughts

`The Gathering' happens because Liam Hegarty dies suddenly. Through the words of his beloved sister Veronica who collects his body and organizes the funeral, we learn the tale of the Hegarty family and a terrible secret from the distant past which she shares with Liam. Collecting her thoughts, feelings and memories hopping through three generations I suppose reflects an intrinsic quality, a certain originality in this novel, but it still did not satisfy me.

The display of thoughts and situations that flow and scatter chasing each other in almost every page is often too disjointed for my liking. This probably conveys Veronica's pain and state of mind in an authentic way -facing the irreversible past and struggling with grief, seeking redemption- but I found that past and present interchanging swiftly, with juxtapositional vague memories and some mental images, rendered the whole story a bit knotty. Also, I really did not think that any of the characters were suitably portrayed. There are no standouts one way or the other, which could have added depth to the novel; perhaps this was the author's intention (i.e. a portrait of a very ordinary, numerous, imperfect family) but because most characters seem to just linger in the background, without much purpose, the result was that I soon found the whole thing quite dispersive, bordering boring.
I have finished the book because I always do, but I was expecting more by a Man Booker Prize Winner.
Sorry, sometimes that's the way it goes.

Not too thrilled

I had high hopes for this book given that it had won a prize, but was sadly disappointed. I was actually sorry I had spent the time reading it.

Disappointing

I really expected (and wanted) to like this book. I was patient and kept reading, hoping to get to the part of the book where it took off and became interesting. But I honestly never ended up connecting with or caring that much about the characters. For me, this book was a disappointment.

Excrutiating

I have absolutely no clue as to what when on in this award winning??book. As hard as I tried I couldn't even finish it. All I can say is the Booker Award judge must have owed the author a favor. It was like sitting through an awful movie waiting for it to get better (and it never does) and then kicking yourself for wasting 2 hours of your life. Read something else.

Graceful & Imaginative

I'm not surprised that this book won the Booker Prize. Enright has a superior command of the language. She creates fluid yet surprising prose, moving between real and imagined events, past and present with astounding grace and skill. This book is a surreal meditation on family--mother love, sister love, craziness, memory, and in particular the way one generation impacts the next.