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The Gathering | 
 enlarge | Author: Anne Enright
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £1.74
You Save: £6.25 (78%)
New (29) Used (23) Collectible (1) from £1.74
Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 1331
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
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Vintage 2008 paperback, uncreased spine, good+++ / very good condition. #
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Don`t waste your time and money September 28, 2008
L. White (kent,England)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the most tedious book I have ever read.I read it together with other members of a book club and nobody liked it. It was full of self pity and unlikeable characters. How it won the Booker Prize I don`t understand. At the book club we even joked about having a ritual burning of it as we disliked it so much.
 A definite no-no! September 9, 2008
Jane Watson (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Oh dear ... what can one say about this book (that hasn't already been said by other reviewers certainly). I read this book for my book group and after the first 15 pages or so found myself thinking - right, let's get this book over and done with and get on to something interesting! The central premise was obviously the gathering of the relatives for Liam's funeral but Veronica (the narrator of the story) meandered from thought to thought and appeared to be obsessed with sex which become very tedious and boring after a while. The chapters and asides about Ada the grandmother seemed totally unnecessary and very odd and apart from the abuse part with Lambert Nugent could easily have been left out - except that would have made the book thinner than it was and was presumably just padding.
There was no real story to this book I found and although I could empathise with some of Veronica's feelings concerning her children and her siblings the whole thing was just a bit too odd and strange to make it a worthwhile read.
Can't think how it did win the Booker prize - who nobbled the judges!
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]
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