The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) Reviews

• Hauntingly behind closed doors

  
  By A2TWBMSMBXFJKE on 2007-10-25
  Anne Enright has created characters that resonate long after the book has been closed. Since I had the privilege of reading it in one sitting on a cross-country flight, I was able to absorb the beauty of its images, the 3-dimensional character studies, the haunting and enraging family dynamics without interruption, totally immersed in the passions and histories of Veronica and her family. This book is written in a meaty, organic style, rare to find (e.g., "There was something about the smell of us growing up that drove (our parents) completely insane." and "The ground is boiling with corpses, the ground is knit out of their tangled bones.")
  
  The plot should not be revealed in a review but allowed to unfold in the reader's imagination. It is a complete, masterful work.
  
  

• Uneven

  
  By A17RG4CS9EYYUS on 2008-02-24
  The Booker prize is a strange beast. The books that make it to the short list are usually excellent, yet somehow the worst of those always gets chosen.
  
  I expected to loveloveLOVE this book. I adore books about multi-generational family dysfunction, and I'm a total sucker for evocative locales. This book covers a large Irish family from the 1920s to the current day. The plot is driven by funeral arrangements for the family's black sheep, who has committed suicide. The writing is lovely. It is almost impossible for me to dislike a book that contains so many fascinating elements. Sadly, however, "The Gathering" is that book.
  
  This is not to say the it's a total loss. What Enright can do, she does well. For instance, she perfectly captures the strange and malleable thing that is childhood memory. I found myself nodding along as the main character, Veronica, describes her grandparent's house and various members of the extended family through eight-year-old eyes. Enright clearly wants to convey the uncertainty of memory and she succeeds. Veronica vividly remembers events that may or may not have occurred, or perhaps involved her siblings rather than herself. Additionally, her prose is beautiful. You'll be struck more than once by a sentence that's horrible, gorgeous, brilliant, and despairing all at once.
  
  At the same time, I agree with all the criticisms levelled here. The book jumps haphazardly from the present to the past, and if that wasn't bad enough, it's often unclear whether it's all a figment of Veronica's imagination. I think Enright wanted to intensify the sense of uncertainty around the stories we tell to make sense of our family history. She uses a heavy hand, and the end result is a confused mess.
  
  This mess is most painful when it comes to Veronica's relationship with her husband. They are on the verge of divorce, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong. Apparently her husband works a highly competitive field, and is unsatisfied. Wow, who knew THAT could happen? Or maybe her husband has cheated on her. It's hard to tell when Veronica states that her husband stays with her because he hates her. Yes, that might seem strange to the average reader, but that's before you learn that he, like all men, hates her because he doesn't want to lose control during orgasm.
  
  This leads me to another point, one I was surprised to see no mention of: the narrator deeply, profoundly despises men. It's so pointed that I thought perhaps Enright wanted the reader to assume that Veronica was sexually abused, though it's not explicitly described. The generalizations about men as sex starved, narcissistic monsters come early and often. I'm not sure if just the narrator is bitter, or if perhaps the author is as well.
  
  Additionally, I have to agree that the book is often self-indulgent and overwrought. If you're looking frequent and unflattering descriptions of genetalia, then this is the book for you. The romantic relationships generally start with people falling in love, or life-long lust, at first glance. Additionally, Veronica emphasizes over and over the haunting, stunning, heart breakingly blue eyes all the children have. Is this a serious work of literature, or a romance novel?
  
  Even the writing, the strongest point in the book stumbles more than once. The first time Veronica describes a family member as "human meat", I was shocked and enthralled. Unfortunately, this metaphor loses some power after half a dozen uses.
  
  Finally, I may be jaded, but this family didn't seem all that dysfunctional. There's tragedy, but when you're describing several dozen people's lives, what are the odds that every single one is happy and normal? Isn't that just life? Of course it's painful for the people involved, but I'm not sure that Enright realizes that pain, though it feels special when it happens to you, is quite ordinary.
  
  I'll probably try another one of Enright's books, but overall, this one was not worth the effort.
  
  

• Disapointed

  
  By A2GANR9I6XHTU9 on 2007-11-29
  This book revolves a woman, her Irish family and the death of her brother Liam. She starts having flashbacks and memories from when Liam was alive. It also turns out theres a secret. Then the family starts preparing for the funeral and in between all this the woman starts replaying all these relationships she had in the past.. Eloquently though boringly.
  
  There was just too much going on in this one. Relationship after relationship and the characters were not that interesting. I agree with the other reviewers concerning how confusing and disjointed this book was. The author has a way with words and is quite poetic at times though that can't save this from the overlapping stories and characters that go on and on and on. It didn't move me. I would give it somewhere between a 2 and 3.
  
  

• "There Are So Few People Given Us To Love And They All Stick"

  
  By A9I40WFF40R4 on 2007-11-13
  The narrator in Anne Enright's THE GATHERING Veronica-- "an ugly enough thing I had always thought"-- Hegarty is one of nine surviving children out of twelve (with seven miscarriages) of a large Irish family. Liam, the closest sibling to her, both in age (he is eleven months older) and in affection, has died. She has the sad task of making all the burial arrangements that include telling their frail, aged mother. The surviving members of this wildly dysfunctional clan meet for a wake (the gathering) so realistic that it will break your heart.
  
  At one point the narrator says that all big families are the same. Enright has made the Hegartys (she has a dozen ways to desribe the blue of their eyes) symbolic of every large family: those the parents favored, those they didn't, the messers (Liam), the drunks, the most successful, the religious one, the mysterious one, the brightest. This family calls to mind another large family in Thomas Wolfe's 1939 novel LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL. The narrative, as the Queen would say in Alan Bennett's recent novel THE UNCOMMON READER, does not progress as the crow flies but rather meanders in and out among three generations of this crazed and in some ways doomed family.
  
  There are family secrets revealed along the way including one that may explain why some of the characters do what they do; on the other hand we cannot be sure since memory is never completely reliable. Enright's haunting prose is also often beautiful. After the birth of her daughter Rebecca, Veronica gets back her sense of smell with an "aromatic rush." At Liam's wake Rebecca must see her mother as a "mislaid giant." Veronica has larged-boned "transvestite ankles." She reminds the reader that there are so "few people given us to love. . . 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." On the other hand, you do not always like the people you love. One of the most touching scenes out of many occurs when Veronica's old mother finally goes to bed the night that her son Liam lies in a coffin in the downstairs living room. Veronica notices that she sleeps on her own side of the bed, leaving plenty of room for a husband dead many years.
  
  Ms. Enright writes so well about what happens-- love, loss, failure, death-- in every family.
  
  
  
  

• Insights into Women, Family and Memory

  
  By AGXFHT5FBTVC6 on 2007-11-06
  There have any number of books about dysfunctional Irish and irish American families (some maudlin, some very good). There are a few things that set this one apart in my mind.
  
  First, as a man reading this novel, I think I gained some new insights into the way women think (although it is not clear how any of these insights will necessarily help any man).
  
  Second, the importance of the role of birth order and family dynamics is striking - particularly to those who are part of or are familiar with jumbo size families. How is Veronica's role different than her sisters'? How lost is Veronica in the middle of this super-sized clan?
  
  Third, the role of memory in our lives is an important part of this novel. Enright explores the questions (without attempting to resolve the unresolvable) of how precise are our memories? which of them are real? what part do memories real or created have in directing our present selves? Is memory fate? In my view, these issues are brillantly set out in "The Gathering".
  
  In this particular aspect, Enright's novel reminds me of both Banville's "The Sea" (another Booker award winner) and McEwan's "Atonement" - two other books I strongly recommend.
  
  Kudos to Anne Enright on her well deserved Booker prize.
  
  Thomas J. Rice
  
  
• A mixed bag...
  By A2NH4D9NIP0Q94 on 2007-12-12
  I read a number of reviews on this book before writing this, and found something in each one to agree. I think if you pick one review each across the 1-5 stars and average out across all of them, you'll get a fair assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this book. What I am going to try and do thus is present a balanced review, which pretty much represents my "average feeling" about the book.
  
  Firstly, let me very briefly summarize the plot: the book revolves around the life of one of the nine surviving children of an Irish family, her reminiscences (real and imaginary) of her life and those of her family, and in particular her recently deceased brother. The "dysfunctional family story" which has been much bandied by a number of people is not strictly true, because this is really the woman's story, with the family naturally taking a prominent position given their size and range of "experiences".
  
  The positives first then: Enright really does seem to have a "fresh" style of writing - I got hooked into the book right away, and read the first third at one quick go. Very surprisingly though, the freshness goes stale very quickly, and I found it genuinely tedious to go through the rest of the book. But we were talking of positives here, so let's get back there: the book is littered with some stylistic gems, such as the one quoted by another reviewer here: "All our parents were mad in those days. There was something about just the smell of us growing up that drove them completely insane." Enright, when she chooses to, can create really well defined characters, such as the protagonist, whose nuances - physical, mental, and emotional, are beautifully unveiled through her thoughts and actions.
  
  The negatives: above all, Enright has no ability to use the non-linear narrative style to her advantage. On the contrary, it severely detracts from the book, making it a rather complex and painful read. A conscious or unconscious, but negative either way, fallout of this structure was that the book's dramatic arc was entirely absent - it just didn't feel like a build-up to something, instead remaining at a near constant sort of intensity (which is high largely) throughout. This might not bother other readers, but it really takes away a lot for me, because I like to and want to look forward to something - something to keep me turning the pages. On her style, while there were a number of gems in the book, there were as many, or maybe more occasions when the line was crossed and the prose became completely outlandish and pretentious. And finally, while the protagonist's character was very well detailed, almost all others were little more than silhouettes, leaving too much to the imagination, which was not a positive in this case given all the clutter that Enright was creating in the book.
  
  Overall, I felt disappointed with the book, but I don't think I will give up on the author - yet. This book reminded me of all the mediocrities churned out by Rushdie, because I have read each one partly for the sake of the few gems which I know I can be assured of, but more importantly in the hope that there might just be another "Midnight's Children" between the covers. I sense that Enright's masterpiece might come too, and I look forward to reading that someday.
  
  
  
• Maddening
  By A28MGVVHC9O3UF on 2008-04-15
  Enright provides the best synopsis, even the best analysis of THE GATHERING, in its very first sentence: "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 it really did happen." Brace yourselves, folks, that attempt is exactly what this book is. The narrator would *like* to write something down, but you know, she has insomnia, her brother's dead, her mother's vague, her husband's not electrifying, her grandmother's sex life isn't entirely clear -- she's got things on her mind, she can't get around to it. On page 142, she reminds herself she meant to write it down, says it's time to write it down, then writes a few Lifetime-Channel-type secrets down, all the while prepping a trap door beneath your feet, because, you know, we're not sure it really did happen.
  
  Fire or retire that Booker Prize panel. Enright can write a sentence -- there are 45 striking sentences in this book -- but loses her way in a paragraph and is clueless about assembling a story. What she thinks a novel is and what people who love fiction want to read are light-years apart.
  
  
• .. of relatives, reminiscences, and regrets ..
  By A1DYMH30TSRONY on 2008-05-09
  The nine surviving Hegarty siblings gather together in the family home in Dublin for the wake of their brother Liam. In the observance of a life now ended, Liam's sister Veronica (our narrator) recalls the past - both real and perhaps imagined - to try to understand the why and the how of Liam's life and death.
  
  There are a number of different layers to this story and, although I read it in two sittings, I'll be rereading it to explore aspects I simply observed without necessarily understanding. The beauty of Ms Enright's prose is that you don't need to fully absorb the plot in order to undertake the journey. I found myself stepping outside the story simply to admire the language, and then hastening back inside again to keep up with the action. This is a story you can read quickly: the life and death of Liam; Veronica's observational angst; the likeable and less likeable family members are each cleanly (if not always clearly) presented.
  
  There is more than one story in this novel, and if I tell you which one I read it may well detract from your own reading pleasure. My advice to intending readers is to approach this book as you would any large family: what you see on first acquaintance is not necessarily all there is.
  
  I hope you enjoy the novel as much as I did.
  
  Jennifer Cameron-Smith
  
  
  
• A stark, harsh, and powerful novel about ...
  By A2CRTN7BI7YNMA on 2007-10-28
  (***** = breathtaking, **** = excellent, *** = good, ** = flawed, * = bad)
  
  ... 39 year-old Veronica who must claim the body of her favorite brother and arrange his funeral when he commits suicide. As her troubled siblings (9 still living of the original 12!) gather to drink and bicker in the family home at Dublin, Veronica tries to piece together the sinister events of one summer she can barely remember that she senses must have formed his destiny. Longer review at ImpatientReader-dot-com.
  
  
• Hard to care
  By A1MZGGARLRZ2Y3 on 2007-11-17
  I can't imagine how any reviewer could describe Enright's characters as vivid, since I didn't get a sense of who any of them were--not even the narrator. The author jumps around so much, that after a while, I just stopped caring about the story at all. Whether she talked about the past or the present, it was all pretty boring just the same--which is amazing since you would think a story involving so many siblings would be interesting. I regret this purchase. The best part about this book was that I resold it.
  
  
• Sex on every page
  By A3AQY1NZL5TP3L on 2007-12-28
  An annoyingly narcissistic work. The writer thinks she's James Joyce. The narrator is obsessed with sex, hers and her imagined relatives'. If you don't care about the minor turmoils in the narrator's mind - and after about 50 pages I didn't - there's nothing else here.
  
  
• Entire book club despised book
  By A13GQ7PEO3SMVA on 2008-03-12
  I will keep this brief because so many others who gave this book a poor rating described the problems so well. I just returned from my book club where we discussed this book. Out of 8 members, only 4 had the tenacity to make it to the end of this disjointed, dull, and painful read. The rest could not bear to finish it. I was expecting it to be sad given the subject matter, but since none of the characters are likable, it is not sad at all. Absolute case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
  During the entire read, all I could think about were the poor authors who were "runners up" for the Booker award and then beat out by this uninteresting story.
  
  
• not deserving of the Booker Prize
  By A37KKARXYTM8Y2 on 2007-11-24
  Although there are some well-written passages, this novel overall is static, inaccessible, remote, and relentlessly dull. It concerns a woman named Veronica whose brother has committed suicide. She tries to come to grips with this tragedy. The narrative ( or lack thereof) is essentially a mood piece in which Veronica traces her past family history to explore the potential causes of his suicide... and her own melancholy. Too hodgepodge, obscure, and oblique, "The Gathering" is for the pretentious kind of critic...and verbal stylists.
  
  For a far more engaging and moving novel on a dark subject matter, read Ian McEwan's exquisite " On Chesil Beach " instead. It is so much better.
  
  
  
  
• Awkward but interesting
  By A1LKSZ9CYJ6829 on 2008-02-25
  Thirty-eight-year-old Veronica Hegarty has the sad task of going to Brighton, England, to bring the body of Liam, her one-year-older brother, who has drowned himself at sea, back to her mother's house in Dublin, where eight surviving siblings are to gather. But this incident has caused Veronica to widely reminisce about her entire life, beginning from the time when she, at age eight, and Liam were shipped off to her grandmother Ada's house to her highly unsettled marriage.
  
  Veronica turns a harsh light on life in general, refusing to be taken in by the platitudes and convenient fictions of life. A main theme is her rather cynical view of sexuality, from male genitalia to the predominance of exploitation. In some cases she finds love to be a form of hate. In addition, the uncomfortable communication at Liam's wake hardly supports the notion of families as primary entities for emotional support.
  
  Most of the story is rather difficult to follow as the author abruptly switches among locales, generations, and characters. Because much of the book is in the form of what Veronica remembers, the question invariably arises of whether events actually occurred or are imagined.
  
  The book is a slow read. The writing can be quite sharp and clever one moment and awkward the next. The author is telling us something; it's just a little vague. The reader is required to work pretty hard to dig out what is there.
  
  
  
• A bitter little pill of a book.
  By A30KEXFT9SILL6 on 2008-03-30
  
  There are some books which I enjoy a lot as I read them. Later, however, when I put them down I find that I hardly remember what they had to say.
  
  The Gathering is a little bit of the opposite experience. As I read, I was not at all sure what it was that I was supposed to be reading. It is fairly difficult to access, and not terribly forgiving of lapsed attention. Mostly I found myself saying to myself: "Why? Why did this win the Man Booker Prize?" But then somewhere towards the end, Enright pulls a magic trick. The book wraps itself up somehow, and is at once something shining. Something, dare I say it, which would like to fly. But still, I was not really sure that this was enough. It came so late in the book and what came before that moment was so leaden, I was not sure what I wanted to think. I mean, what I wanted to think about the overall experience.
  
  Given time, the experience of reading the book has settled a little bit. I find that instead of growing more distant, I actually feel closer to the novel. I like it more. I have the impulse to buy another book by Enright. I am willing to forgive The Gathering its sharp edges and elbows.
  
  And boy oh boy does this book have sharp elbows. It is a bitter little pill of a novel. Just like its main character, it resists sympathy and identification. Enright uses fantasy, disjointed narrative, unpleasant people doing unpleasant things-- pretty much every device that you can imagine to force the reader back outside the text. It makes for such a strange combination because she writes with such lyrical prose and such a delicate hand that you expect to find the book yielding. The contrast is very interesting, but in the end I am not sure how successful The Gathering really is-- largely for that reason.
  
  I remain surprised that it won the Man Booker Prize. I took a look at the reviews on Amazon, and am not shocked to find them universally savage. An Irish female writer dealing with the subject of a dysfunctional family has a certain flavor to it-- carries a load of expectation. Those poor readers who go into it expecting The Book of Ruth or some other typical Oprah pick are going to be angry, not just disappointed. Some bad things happen, but often the narrator is just cranky. You are not allowed to feel that you have understood the past; sometimes the main character just makes things up. No catharsis, no redemption, no Irish brogue. The prose is pretty, but pretty like a snake in the grass is pretty. It glitters and it hisses and it does not really let you touch its skin.
  
  This book reminds me of myself in truly black rages-- when I want to share nothing with nobody and go through the past as though I were reading a grocery list. In those moods, I would pull the head off of anyone who tried to sympathize or pretended to understand. This book has the mean reds.
  
  But then that lightness at the end-- I don't know. I still need to think about this one a while longer.
  
  In summary, for me, interesting. I am impressed, but have doubts. Please be aware of what you are getting before you start to read the novel. There is nothing worse than biting into what you think is a raspberry and getting a wasabi pea. Think bitter and think dark and you will be better prepared.
  
  
• NOT ALL IS HUNKY DORY IN THIS WORLD OF ATTACHMENT/DETACHMENT
  By A1L8HRCM60W0W7 on 2007-11-11
  I had read Enright's collection of short stories before picking up this novel at Kinokuniya's impulse buys, but not even the agility of those voices could have prepared me for this staggering work.
  
  Ostensibly, the theme is a straightforward one. "The Gathering" is about an Irish woman's reflex to the death of a loved one, as her larger family--those whom she "did not choose to love, but loved nonetheless"--comes together for the funeral. Her memories, denials, justifications are put into play in a tapestry of some very inventive prose. The setting is murky and could therefore have been an overwhelmingly despondent one (the last thing we need is yet another weepy saga) but the lightness of Enright's words marks a remarkable intelligence, a gift for rapier observation. It conjures up an image of her sitting down with her drafts, poring over her sentences, herding them into neatly austere lines. Which, goodie goodie, makes for a delicious read.
  
  But I will not dote without reservation as the other reviewers have done so far (a feast of all 5 stars). Half-way through, I began to hope that we would overcome the clever detachment that pervades the novel, but the author barricades her characters until the very end. As much as I tried to play along, I felt that some of the descriptions became overwrought, especially erotic ones that anointed themselves as literary objet d'art instead of contributing to the characters. Which quickly got tedious. At times, I had had enough of all the talk of 'gonads' and longed for someone to hold a toothbrush or fling open a window.
  
  I suppose this lack of tenderness was deliberate, given the theme of a woman's resolve and imagination as tools for coping, but overdo it and you'll leave the most avid reader bereft. Maybe Enright's very point was to create a book that unapologetically chronicled how numbing and emotionally bankrupt some dysfunctional families can be, and I have known enough Irish to think this possible--not to be stereotypical or anything. But as I found myself simmering lovingly over sentences, wondering if certain depictions would ever be this funny or well-baked again, I left with little interest in learning anything further about the protagonist.
  
  Were a film to be made from The Gathering, it would undoubtedly end up in the suave cadre of something like The Hours. Great overlaps in tone and theme: an ethereal exploration of love, suicide, family. But in the same vein, The Gathering, too, is polarizing if not downright perplexing. My right brain suggested that its insouciant prose is a victory for literature and the hallmark of a great writer, but my left brain frequently looked at the watch longing for a Simpsons rerun.
  
  As such, it is a fine novel and comes highly recommended, but make sure you have the appetite for this riveting slosh of emotions.
  
  
• The Horror and Wonder of Love
  By A1TPW86OHXTXFC on 2007-12-30
  Fellow novelist AL Kennedy, reviewing The Gathering for the Guardian, argued that everything Enright has written is "alive with that lovely thing - a fully realised voice: muscular, agile, sometimes witty, sometimes hallucinogenic, often dark and lyric in a quiet and horribly skillful way".
  
  Anne Enright has written a book about family, love, hate, sex, desire, generations, child abuse, and facing one's own mortality. Her character, Veronica, one of the Hegarty clan, has word of her brother, Liam's death, and she is on her way to claim his body. On her way she reminisces about the family and builds layer upon layer of the family members that we meet.Her prose is such that you are either intimidated by its mastery or drawn into the brilliance of the descriptions of the family and need to know the stories. And, the stories are there and come one by one as I said, built layer upon layer so that you finally come to know the feelings and needs of them all. Maybe too much of the feelings for some. Veronica, facing her own self shies away from her family and wraps herself in the waves of emotion that come her way. Anne Enright writes about love and sexual desire and as she says "One of the things I wanted to do in the book was explore how desire and hatred are closely bound up," says Enright. "You know, that sense that someone - usually a man - is enraged by the fact that he desires someone - usually a woman."
  
  I cannot in all honesty divulge much of the book. It must be read and devoured and instilled in the mind to set for later discussion. In Al Kennedy's review in 'The Guardian' he shares this nugget: "The chairman of the Booker judges, Howard Davies, revealed that he had spotted the brilliance of this novel when he said: "It has an absolutely brilliant ending. It has one of the best last sentences of any novel I have ever read." Al Kennedy goes on to say that "mortality becomes the ultimate definition of Love's stupidity - an outpouring of energy towards people who are always destined to disappoint, to be disappointed and, above all, who are compelled to leave us in the most devastating way, by dying. The horror and wonder of love, we are shown, is that it outlives its object."
  
  Wonderfully, Highly Recommended. prisrob 12-30-07
  
  The Wig My Father Wore
  
  The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch: A Novel
  
  
  
• Self-conscious and overwritten
  By AA2ZNXWV895HX on 2008-01-02
  My book club made me read this. It is so overwritten it makes your stomach turn. Here's how grief is described: "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." This putrid and self-conscious style continues throughout.
  
  Every once in awhile you get some good writing. For example, see pp. 26-27. There might be more, but I am thinking about risking my book club's wrath and seeing if there's an old Bewitched rerun on TV.
  
  
• Not an enjoyable read
  By A27QB2QCDK90GP on 2008-02-07
  I didn't hate this book. (How's that for a ringing endorsement?) But, unfortunately I can't say I liked it. It is obvious that Enright has some talent -- there are portions of her novel that are simply beautiful and worth highlighting or marking for future reference. Unfortunately, though, while certain phrases or sentences are quite eloquent or profound, most of her paragraphs and chapters are not. I felt beat over the head with uncomfortable sexual situations. It is apparent that the narrator, and perhaps the author herself, suffered some unpleasant sexual encounters in her life. That doesn't necessarily make for pleasant reading material. While I just could not connect with any of the characters, I did feel she succeeded in creating a dark tone and awkward distance between people that I think rings pretty true in many families, including my own extended one. I may be tempted to pick up another book by this author, but I cannot honestly recommend this one.
  
  
• This was boring and confusing!
  By A3JVLWUJXOKQ15 on 2007-11-26
  I was excited to receive this book; I couldn't wait to read it; oh my! How very disappointing the entire book was; I gave it one star only because there was nothing less; there was no sense to this writing and yet reviewers raved over it. What were the secrets? I must have dozed off during that page. Having lived in the UK for many years, I have an understanding of the Irish people. However, this work seems to have been written by a 10 year old ~ except for the odd complicated word.
  
  I think I shall give up my day job and start writing books, for I feel that my contribution to the literary world will far exceed work such as this. VERY disappointing. I'm trying to think of someone I don't like so that I can give this book to them for Christmas.
  
  
• Boring and pretentious.
  By A3QSO1ARIRV6RC on 2007-12-11
  I had high hopes for this book, but found it dull and pretentious. I didn't care about any of the characters and the big secret wasn't really that big. I wish I'd read all the reviews before buying this because it would have spared me adding this to my book collection.
  
  
• Poetically written but tediously self-indulgent
  By A3PHF9UV3F177L on 2008-01-04
  If I think of words to describe The Gathering, I think of words like "accomplished", "poetic", "beautifully written" - and this is all true, but nevertheless I never warmed to it. It felt tediously self-indulgent: strutting its stuff like a peacock, reveling in its own poetic beauty, but never drawing you in.
  
  The story is narrated by Veronica, who learns that her brother Liam has drowned. She has kept silent for years about an event than took part in their childhood, which she believes started him on his downward spiral. With his death, she is unable to maintain the façade of coping that has kept her going for so long. At the same time, all kind of thoughts and feelings about her family are coming to the fore. The book jumps about in time and tense, between real and imagined events, in a way that I often found confusing. It never feels like it's going anywhere in particular and some major plot points are written so obscurely that it's hard to be sure what is being described.
  
  Parts of this book are a joy to read. Some of the language is gorgeous. I really liked the way that Veronica described her relationship with her husband and children. Some of her passing observations are spot on. However much of the book was so verbose that I found it a struggle to maintain attention.
  
  The author also has an obsession with sex and genitalia which crops up throughout the book, often in a way that felt gratuitous - for example, did we really need a man at the church with an erection? Or a description of her husband's scrotum while he's sleeping? Or of her grandfather's physical reaction to meeting her grandmother? (In fairness to Enright, halfway through the book there is the revelation of an incident in the narrator's part which partially explains this obsession - but even so! It feels completely over the top).
  
  The ending does pull the book together well, but it's a long haul to get there.
  
  
• torturous read
  By A2H0DGOGZVLZ6I on 2008-03-23
  First the good: Enright definitely has a keen sense of description, a poetic heart and a strong imagist sensibility.
  
  But mostly, it was the bad: I cannot say how many times I wanted to slap around all her characters and scream "Get OVER yourself." Someone else called this self-indulgent and overwrought and I had to laugh, because when I finished this book, a friend asked what I thought and I answered with that those exact words!
  
  Disappointing that this won the Booker.
  
  
• Totally Disappointed
  By A12MD2RO3R4Z1Z on 2008-01-05
  I bought this book only because I collect Mann Booker Prize winners and I don't know what the author was thinking, but this is A VERY DIFFICULT READ. I never figured out EXACTLY what the secret was that caused her brother to kill himself, or what her STORY was about. I don't think I'm so unintelligent, I think the writer is so unskilled as a story teller that she couldn't tell the story. She seemed to be so wrought up in her writing that she forgor abot the story. I can't beleive that there wasn't something else written that would nab the Booker Prize.
  
  
• disappointing
  By A29N1U1HE7NXZN on 2008-01-18
  It is with profound regret that I put down this book and walked away. I had had such high hopes of it being a good read having won the Booker Prize and all. However, I found it so disjointed, the narrative so fractioned, that I abandoned it after 150 pages. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many books I have not finished in all of my years of voracious reading. It just left me feeling "Why? Why bother...."
  
  
• Love, Anger, and Sex in a Current Novel
  By A21VR7M8O55EF6 on 2008-07-14
  Anne Enright's "The Gathering" explores issues of family, love, loss, in the voice of a 38 year old woman, Veronica, reflecting upon the suicide of her brother Liam in a large, modern Irish family. The book is told in a stream of consciousness style as Veronica, while responding to her brother's death and handling the details of retrieving his body from England, reflects upon her life and her family. Some of her recollections, as Veronica admits in the first sentence of the book, may not be accurate as they are covered over by memory and self-interest. Veronica is thus something of an unreliable narrator, and Enright, the author, remains in the background without explicit comment.
  
  This is a difficult book. The various Amazon reviews are thoughtful and perceptive, from those which rated the book a 5 to those which rated the book a 1. I learned something from many of the reviewers whose perspective on the book differs from mine. I came away from my reading mostly disliking the book, and the views of many of my fellow reviewers confirmed my response.
  
  "The Gathering" has many poetical moments and beautiful turns of phrase. The narrator, Veronica, appears to make an attempt to be honest with herself. Thus in the story we hear her views about her own life, her large family, parents, grandparents and siblings, and about her husband and children. In particular, we hear a great deal about love, desire, and sex and Veronica's views of their interrelationships. Veronica is bitter and angry. The author presents her character for what she is to allow the reader to try to understand her.
  
  The poetry and the toughness do not save the book. Most of what Veronica says is too bitter and too angry to be interesting or insightful. In fact, a great deal of it is an extreme form of male-bashing which, alas, differs only in degree from much discussion in recent years and which takes no large degree of courage to express. Veronica is obsessed with male sexuality and lust -- with the smell of a man, with the grossest details of a man's body parts, and with a man's sexual activity. She is angry with the way she feels men approach sex and this anger pervades her book far more than does the death of her brother. Her story is told through the fog of time and much of it remains elliptical. But through much of the book, the theme appears to be that women are sullied by male sexuality at least in the form in which most men pursue sex. Their characters and feelings do not meet Veronica's expectations and approval. The story includes long discussions on Veronica's grandmother, Ada, on her questionable early life, and on her relationship with her two suitors. Veronica is also obsessed with the life of her parents -- and on their large family. She attributes the large family and its difficulties to her father wanting too much sex with her mother -- as if, Veronica observes, he had a right to sex. In her own life, Veronica remembers with fondness a Jewish boyfriend from America during her college years. But she feels little for her husband and finds sex with him repellant in frequency, timing, and quality. He had the sex, she observes archly after one of their times together, I did not. Veronica also resents her husband his career success and her own leaving of the work place to raise her children. Too much of this comes off as a screed and to much of it as a rehearsal of what have become commonplaces in some quarters. While I appreciated the attempt of the book to be frank and to speak honestly about one's feelings, I didn't think the book achieved these goals. I came away not caring much about Veronica. And I had too many questions about her responses to her experiences and her insight to find her story compelling.
  
  I was reminded in this book of a recent American novel called, coincidentally enough, "Veronica" by the American writer Mary Gaitskill. This novel, like "The Gathering" is told in a first-person stream of consciousness style. (The narrator is a woman named Allison and the title character is her friend.) Gaitskill's book is also full of tough reflections on sexuality, derived from Allison's life as a stripper and model. But I found Gaitskill's book, in which the sex is much more lurid than anything in "The Gathering," had the personal voice, the immediacy, and the sense of honesty, that Enright's book aims for but for me failed to achieve.
  
  I struggled with "The Gathering" but couldn't bring myself to like or to recommend it.
  
  Robin Friedman
  
  
• Just won the Booker Prize - only other woman winner is Iris Murdoch
  By A2J8IQD78VSMJK on 2007-10-23
  When a woman wins the Booker Prize and a lot of cash, there must be a reason. This book is about 3 generations of Dubliners - an indepth look at what goes on behind the turf smoke.
  
  
• Great book
  By A2HYGPD6DCUON8 on 2007-11-10
  Fascinating narrative. More than occasionally brilliant, always quirky. It would have been a more highly charged book if it had stayed in a more contemporary context. The one failing of the book is the historical re-imaginings. Not sparkingly prose, but a sparkling narrative nonetheless. Very cool ending. SUPERB.
  
  
• LITERARY "TRASH"
  By AS2836Y3XIMU8 on 2007-12-10
  This has to be one of the toughest reads ever. I have been reading this for a book club and I am having such a hard time reading it. The basis of the story is interesting; led me to believe I would enjoy the book. What a disappointment. Thought once the "secret" was out, it would get more interesting...NOT.
  Not a book I would recommend to anyone...entire book club group feels it's difficult to read, as well (all adult women over 40).
  
  
• For better or worse, a very lyrical book
  By AUNHTUF4ATEJM on 2008-01-07
  Although I am somewhat surprised that this book won the Booker Award (for a number of reasons), it's well worth reading, despite its flaws. For me, those flaws included more lyricism than I personally like, and one of those plots where events taking place over many decades are presented in such a way that it's disorienting to the reader. Chronology is not followed. Only about half-way through the book did it become clear what was going on.
  
  Particularly problematic was the fact that so much of the book involved fantasies: what might have happened rather than an account of what actually happened (within the context of the novel). Additionally, not really knowing who these people are made the high level of lyricism somewhat irksome, at least for me.
  
  That having been said, I read this book through in a couple of days -- it engaged my interest despite these problems.
  
  The story involves a particularly large Irish family and is told from the viewpoint of one of the children in the middle. It becomes clear that this family is coming together for the funeral of one of her siblings. The narrator (Veronica) is having a difficult time emotionally, more so than simply grieving, and the book unfolds the buried memories that lie behind the crisis that this death precipitates for her.
  
  One of the reasons I kept reading was that I was trying to find out what this was all about -- why she seemed to be emotionally falling apart and who these people were in the lyrical fantasies (besides her grandmother)and what they had to do with the situation and her emotional state.
  
  So -- if you hate lyrical books, you'll probably want to skip this one. This is, however, one of the better written lyrical novels -- very beautiful language and images, which is probably what won it the Booker Prize. I personally think the book has some literary staying power and is worth reading.
  
  
  
  

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