The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)

The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)
by Anne Enright

The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Anne Enright
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2007-09-10
ISBN: 0802170390
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat

Book Reviews of The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)

Book Review: Disjointed...
Summary: 2 Stars

I'll admit that whenever I see books that have won any kind of literary award, I always assume they're a good, and usually they are, but this one I just don't get.

My main problem with THE GATHERING is that I found it to be incredibly disjointed. While I understand the stream of consciousness style of writing the author uses (or in this case, has her narrator use,) it did not flow very well.

One of the things that really struck me about this book is the way that almost everything is referred to in a highly sexualized way. The chapter in which Veronica speculates about her grandparents' sex life was beyond creepy.

A good premise that falls flat. I'll give it a generous 2 stars.

Summary of The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)

Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Pretty early on in The Gathering you realize that in her lingering portrait of the Hegarty clan (and this isn't hyperbole--they are a family of 12), Irish novelist Anne Enright will wrestle with all the giant literary tropes that have come before her. Family, of course, is the big one, but with equal intensity she explores death and dying, the sea and its siren song, sex, shame, secrecy, unreliable memories, madness, "the drink," and--always in the shadows--England. That said, it's not like any other novel about the Irish that I've read. The story of the Hegartys is indeed bleak, and hard, but it surges with tenderness and eloquent thought which, in the end, are the very things that help this family (or at least her narrator Veronica) survive. Through her eyes, and in Enright's skillful imagination, those small turning-point moments of life that we all know in some form or another--a petty fight, a careless word, an event witnessed--come together in an unshakeable vision of how you become the person you are. --Anne Bartholomew


Anne Enright is a dazzling writer of international stature and one of Ireland’s most singular voices. Now she delivers The Gathering, a moving, evocative portrait of a large Irish family and a shot of fresh blood into the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, drowned in the sea. His sister, Veronica, collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him—something that happened in their grandmother’s house in the winter of 1968. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations her distinctive intelligence twists the world a fraction and gives it back to us in a new and unforgettable light. The Gathering is a daring, witty, and insightful family epic, clarified through Anne Enright’s unblinking eye. It is a novel about love and disappointment, about how memories warp and secrets fester, and how fate is written in the body, not in the stars.

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