Member Reviews

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  1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

  • Rated 2 stars

  “Yes, I know it won the most prestigious literary award in Britain, but I found it a disappointment. Enright is obviously a very good prose stylist who can summon up beautiful, even startling imagery and insights, and the book is laced with them. But I feel she would have created a much more powerful work had she shaped The Gathering as a long short story or a novella. What starts out with great promise deteriorates after four chapters into the sort of abject tedium one imagines a psychotherapist must feel after Patient A shows up for her thousandth one-hour session to drone on about her not very interesting or remarkable childhood traumas. The deep dark secret the narrator spends half the book building (or more exactly, circling) towards hasn’t nearly the shock value or drama to justify the meandering journey through her consciousness and memories that takes up the vast majority of this novel. Things take a great turn for the better in the final third, and manage to redeem the piece, but just barely.
  
  While wading through The Gathering, I couldn’t help thinking of another great, and unknown, Irish writer, Maeve Brennan, whose amazing long story “The Springs of Affection” tackles similar subject matter and manages to pack more power and devastating emotional punch in less than a hundred pages than Enright comes close to achieving here. Less would have been so much more.”

  Tinky wrote this review Tuesday, June 17 2008. ( reply | permalink )
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  1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

  • Rated 5 stars

  “Loved it. Gives me faith that there are still books like this being published, moving and challenging us and getting noticed.”

  Amanda H wrote this review Thursday, January 24 2008. ( reply | permalink )
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  1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

  • Rated 0 stars

  “This book is the 2007 Man Booker Prize Winner. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. His sister, Veronica was there then, as she is now: keeping the dead man company, just for another little while. The "Gathering" is a family epic, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright's unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations - starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman - showing how memories warp and family secrets fester. This is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars. The "Gathering" sends fresh blood through the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. As in all Anne Enright's work, fiction and non-fiction, this is a book of daring, wit and insight: her distinctive intelligence twisting the world a fraction, and giving it back to us in a new and unforgettable light. ”

  Leaf wrote this review Sunday, January 13 2008. ( reply | permalink )
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  1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

  • Rated 0 stars

  “I was skeptical at first, especially since I had read some reviews that said Ian McEwan's Chesil Beach should have won the Booker Prize. So I read both, and was pleasantly surprised by The Gathering. Once I got used to the cadence of the book, I was really drawn in. ( I found the author's style to be very similar to that of Edna O'Brien. )
  
  A bit of a swirl, but ultimately, a very good book.
  
  I particularly latched onto the idea that you can't always trust your childhood memories -- a bit eye opening if you consider how such experiences and memories shape who we are as adults. Perception vs. reality. Something to think about.”

  Christine wrote this review Sunday, December 16 2007. ( reply | view 2 replies | permalink )
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  • Rated 3 stars

  “Truth, memory, and speculation converge in this evocative, lyrical novel that won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. It is the meditation of a 39-year-old Irishwoman after she learns that Liam, her favorite brother in a family of twelve children, has committed suicide. The shock—which, given Liam’s history, isn’t really all that much of a shock—sends her into a tailspin as she begins to assess her life, her marriage, and, most of all, her own past and family history. This novel is definitely one of the more “literary” picks on the list, but if you don’t mind dark subject matter and a somewhat convoluted narrative style, The Gathering makes for a powerful reading experience.
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  Tracy W wrote this review 5 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
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  • Rated 0 stars

  “As Hegarty is my maiden name I just had to give this one a go. A little crazy at times and you are not sure what is real or imagined but a solid read. Quick”

  thegar01 wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
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  • Rated 0 stars

  “This book almost made me ashamed of my Irish roots. I kept waiting for Veronica to "just get on with it." If this is a Booker winner, I wonder what did not win?
  Certainly Veronica was grieving, but she wasn't even sure of her memories. I did not see much growth in her character, which I always believed is the sign of a well-constructed story.”

  Kathleen H wrote this review 9 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
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  • Rated 5 stars

  “Haunting. A completely brittle and open look at grief. Anne Enright requires her reader to have vision, not to take all things literally but to step into memories knowing that memories can be misconstrued because of the love you have for people and because of perception. This story's main character, Veronica Hegarty, is trapped in a world of losing a beloved brother, Laim, and of trying to understand her patchwork family. She struggles with how to just simply be after living with piles and piles of years' worth of confusion that seems to all rise to the surface with Liam's body, floating there, obvious amidst the beauty of the water. There is no romance in this novel. There is no comforting warm firelight at the end. This book is a majestic weave of pain and love, a poetic interlude between the fate of birth and death. Profound... ”

  Jen-Ay wrote this review 12 days ago. ( reply | permalink )
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  • Rated 5 stars

  “This book is brilliantly written. I was sure it was very well written, but I wasn't sure I liked it until the very end. It tells the story of a family at the death of a brother/son and a recollection of this particular family's life and their struggles to deal with life in this world and all the brokenness and healing that is present.”

  Mike Mather wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink )