Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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151 of 162 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Uneven, February 23, 2008
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.
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46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
.. of relatives, reminiscences, and regrets .., May 8, 2008
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
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73 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"There Are So Few People Given Us To Love And They All Stick", November 13, 2007
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.
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