Customer Reviews

The Gathering: A Novel

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(46)
1 star:		(38)

 

 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.