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The Gathering | 
 enlarge | Author: Anne Enright
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.32
You Save: £7.67 (96%)
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Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 1130
Media: Paperback
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0099501635
EAN: 9780099501633
ASIN: 0099501635
Publication Date: March 20, 2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 don't buy this book (no star) September 2, 2008
msmagoo (North London)
This book was one I couldn't wait to finish so I could chuck it away and not have to remember that I wasted any time on it.It was the worst I have read for as long as I can remember.The story chopped and changed and I did not understand many of her discriptions and had to go back and re-read them to see if they made anymore sense (they didn't).
Save your money, wish I'd saved mine.
 Tedious August 26, 2008
Bettylou
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Constant analysis by the narrator of the minutiae of life just becomes utterly tedious and irritating very quickly. I persevered to the end but I really didn't find any of the characters engaging or interesting.
 "All I have are stories..." July 28, 2008
Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
. . . 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]
unjustly maligned June 23, 2008
Schrodinger's cat (UK)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Having just finished this book, I find some of the descriptions of its boredom-inducing qualities in other reviews unwarrented. The central 'plot' is well-described elsewhere - a woman comes to term with her past and that of her recently dead brother in the context of her large Irish family - but it is the peeling back of the onion layers, the gradual revelation, the crystallisation of detail that gives this book its appeal. Yes, it reads as a monologue, first-person narrated, and yes, there may be little traditional characterisation, but I found it compellingly written, in a distilled-down, nothing-wasted kind of style that combines simplicity and depth. If you are prepared to accept ambiguity in what is real, what is unreal, what is half-remembered by the narrator, then it's a rewarding read.
A Family of Saga of Death or a Femist Tract? June 19, 2008
Herman Norford (Birmingham, UK)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Somewhere in the course of lives, I suspect that a need arises to dissect one's life and the life of close relatives and friends. Veronica, the narrator of The Gathering, is prompted to do so on the death of her brother, Liam. Veronica's narrative takes us back and forth in time as she dissect and reveal family relationships and in particular her's and Liam's journey into adulthood.
On publication there was so much hype about The Gathering being a bleak and depressing novel, primarily about the suicide of Liam, that on reading it I felt defrauded. True Veronica's story is bleak and at times depressing but it is so for other reasons beyond the melancholy of suicide. To a large extent, what Anne Enright does is to present a neo-feminist tract in the guise of a family saga.
All that should not suggest that this novel is not an interesting read. Ironically, it is partly interesting because Enright lacked the skills to cover the machination of the novel. Ostensibly, the death of Liam plunges Veronica into a soul searching reverie about life and death. Her musings, sometimes bitter, angry but above all down right honest is a threnody not only to Liam but also and perhaps more importantly to her own life in terms of what could have been possible.
However, a close reading soon reveals that The Gathering is very much a naturalistic novel. It places the Hegarty's in a particular social milieu and partly explores the impact of hereditary and environment upon, at least, three generations of Hegarty's. This approach rendered the novel pessimistic and over deterministic. It is not that I don't enjoy naturalism in the novel, I was and still am a great admirer of the master of naturalism, namely Emile Zola. However, in the hands of Enright, I found her naturalism lacking the pangs of emotions that move me when I come across it the arts.
I found Enright's mataphors and use of language opaque at times. This had me re-reading sentences. Her style did not help to bring the issues of the novel alive. I was therefore not drawn into the family saga and became disengaged. Enright also left no pace between the extremes of black and white. In other words, the novel lacked nuance and subtlety.
Another reason why this novel did not struct a cord with me is that I did not like nor could I sympatise with the main character, Veronica. Her temprement was brooding and she was self serving. Imagine on the night of the wake for a dead brother telling your old and senile mother that he is dead because she sent him to live with his grand parent where he was sexually abused. Then adding that your mother failed to protect her son which sent him on a path to suicide. This would be a supreme act of trying to expunge guilt by extreme selfishness. That is exactly what Veronica does.
When the family do get together not much happens. It is an anti-climax. This is mainly because Veronica has moaned and groaned so much about herself ahd her relationships that there is not much left to surprise us.
It is not the subject of the novel nor its bleakness that makes The Gathering a disappointment. Rather it was that my expectation of what I was going to read about was turned upside down and I was left feeling that I was sold one thing under the guise of another.
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