The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) | Anne Enright

The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) | Anne Enright | "All I have are stories..."

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The Gathering (Man...

	The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) Anne Enright Grove Press, Black Cat, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 126 reviews view larger image
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Difficulty coming to terms

Anne Enright has written a book that will (and has) spark debates for years to come. Admittedly, this book is not for everyone and more often than not the reader will have to re read it to fully understand what this book is about. I, for one, enjoyed this grim tale of Veronica Hegarty. The backdrop of the story is Irish and we're taken on an arduous journey of a woman trying to escape the Catholic Church. The story unfolds when her brother Liam commits suicide and Veronica is forced to bring the body from England - the scene of his death.

Veronica tells the story of the dark family secrets dating back to her Grandparents and vaulting forward to her present day in an effort to unweave this family tree. We learn of the trouble that harbors deep within her as a result of her childhood. Veronica is lost in her own world and seems to be unable to express her emotions and damages her psyche. Anne Enright has done a remarkable job outlining the troubling life of this thirty something woman who finds difficulty in gripping reality.

Editor of the novel: Fates by Georgiou, Tino Fates (2nd Edition)

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"All I have are stories..."

. . . writes Veronica, the narrator of this unusual family saga, in the opening pages, ... "night thoughts, the sudden convictions, that uncertainty spawns." It will be important for us, the readers, to keep this in mind as we get increasingly drawn into Anne Enright's award-winning novel. While it is a family saga of sorts, it is much more a psychological study of a woman in crisis. Written in a straightforward, sometimes witty, conversational tone which later may sometimes prove deceiving, Veronica's thoughts and ruminations move in apparently haphazard fashion from her childhood experiences in the 1960s to the present. The present being some months after the funeral of her brother which brought her together with the rest of the Hegarty clan.

Veronica's crisis centres on Liam, her favourite brother who has died in untoward circumstances. She wants to tell his story, yet finds it difficult to come to terms with who he has become since their intimate childhood years. Did his troubled life commence with an event she recalls observing when she was nine and he eleven at their gran's? Did it actually happen or is her memory playing tricks? Did something happen to her too at that time? In her reminiscences of that carefree long summer holiday with Liam and younger sister Kitty at their grandmother's, a dark cloud was hanging over them. Enright contrasts this special summer with the usual life in the Hegarty family: "Mammy" always pregnant, the father rarely seen around the increasingly large family. Poverty is hinted at in many ways, without being overplayed. Among Vee's shorter or longer introductions of her large family, Ada, the grandmother, stands out as the most important character. Veronica imagines her as a young girl of 18 in 1925, when Irish women had very little freedom to choose which way their life should go. Vee clearly feels drawn to her as she tries to lift the mystery of Ada's relationship to the two men in her life. While she remains a presence beyond her death, others, like the parents, pale to almost nothingness. "Sometimes I don't remember my mother. I look at her photograph and she escapes me."

Returning to that crucial time of Veronica's childhood quite often, Enright's ability to draw out her protagonist's uncertainty as to what actually happened and her emotional turmoil that accompanied the ambiguity of her recollections is exquisite. For Vee, the reverberations of the past appear to stack insurmountable obstacles in the way of her present life, in particular in her relationship to nice and kind husband Tom. Is a way out, a conclusion, possible?

In the end, "The Gathering" that Enright exposes the reader to is not primarily the physical coming together of the family for the funeral, as it is Vee's gathering of memories and reassessments of events and people of the past. The description of the wake, the interaction between the different Hegarty siblings, nonetheless, brings the diverse strands in the story together in a satisfying manner. [Friederike Knabe]

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A Gathering of the Self

The title of this book may deceive and yet lead the reader to the correct assumption.

A large family congregates around the body of a beloved brother of the narrator, Veronica Hegarty, who visually and mentally reviews portions of her, of their, of every Hegarty's life - and how they entangle with certain confrontations with Lambert Nugent - someone who has been a lover, a landlord and a molester of the family members.

Who is "gathering" is not so much the family, but Veronica's memories. She is trying to gather her self, to see why her brother Liam died, and why he died the way he did.

In the beginning, intricate details of the sexual frustrations or abnormalities experienced by the middle-aged female narrator can be deemed at times as, "more information than this reader wants to know." But, as the book progresses and the details of Nugent's sexual exploits with and to the members of the family become revealed, we realize that she, like the other Hegarties, have become perversely affected by the Nugent influence and constantly pervasive attendance at the familial premises.

Focusing almost exclusively around the events within a fortnight of the death of brother Liam (with recollections scouring decades of family history), Veronica realizes at the very beginning,"There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important." Her children and husband can survive without her - leading her to think of suicidal thoughts (They don't need me anyway).

But, as you read further, suicide is not only a depressing concept to this family, but is the main reason for the family gathering at the brother Liam's wake. And, as the large family congregates for the wake, she realizes that the family has cliques and more within its foundation. "We do not always like the people we love - we do not always have that choice." "We are born to love the people we otherwise would not care to know."

During the ultra-depressing period of grieving's beginning, parts of Veronica's heart become encrusted. They lose life. Veronica Hegarty becomes distant from her husband, Tom. Not intentionally, but from her brother's death she loses a part of something. She is another "mad housewife" - or at least temporarily so. At times Veronica's character of being the good housewife seeking to "leave it all" reminds me of Michael Cunningham's Laura Brown (played in the movie by Julianne Moore) whose storyline centers on her efforts to escape an airless marriage in California in 1949. And, the end is somewhat similar. If you like "The Hours", I would fathom to bet you will like this novel.

Anne Enright is an extremely gifted writer who made this difficult-to-write novel very easy to read. And, in this jumping about, nonlinear narrative account of the past histories of the large Hegarty clan, making the book simple to read is true artistry.

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Fails to Sustain Itself

A great fan of the Booker Prize, which has in recent years garnered more true respect than either the Pulitzer or Book Critics Circle, this recent winner by Anne Enright, however, does not continue the run of praise. Where Enright's family gathering for the funeral of the narrator's brother, Liam, after his suicide, seems a fitting occasion for deep thoughts on the nature of family and sibling bonds, it quickly falls into a relentless diatribe against mothers, brothers, and uncles, from the not so advantageous viewpoint of a women's whose primary concern seems to be recalling all of her sexual failures, problems, exploits, and dysfunctions while drinking herself into a stupor over her love/hate relationship with her dead brother. Anne Enright's narrator soon begins repeating herself, and her basic story, rather than developing any true sense of understanding (of herself or anyone else). If times are this hard in Ireland, then the Potato Famine of the 19th century must have been only a passing annoyance. Enright seems to revel in the brutal psychological alienation of each individual, without let up. The memories of sex, including a rather tawdry and cliched account of Liam's sexual encounter with his uncle at age 9 (do all family narrative now demand sexual abuse as a prerequisite of reader interest?), seem gratuitous at best. And one can sense Enright's love of sexual dysfunction as well, for the narrator returns whenever possible to complain about her sex life, her husband's, her daughter's, her brother's, etc. Where the language of Enright's novel is moving and tense, and the style masterful, the content fails to live up to the early hints of psychological engagement.

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Sorrow, regrets and resignation -- not a mood I want to wallow in

This 2007 Irish novel has won all kinds of accolades, including the Man Booker Prize. That's why I was interested. And that's why I was disappointed as well.

The story is set in modern Ireland and narrated in the first person by Veronica, one of 12 adult siblings whose brother has just committed suicide. This is a sad and haunting story of seriously dysfunctional family and I found myself sorry for all of them and yet understanding that it couldn't be any other way.

The author is skilled. She uses her words well. She is full of sorrow and regrets and resignation.

The book is only 260 pages long and a quick read but I was tempted to just stop reading several times. I definitely applaud her skill in setting a mood. But this is not a mood I want to wallow in and I was glad the book finally ended.

There is no way I can recommend this book.

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