The Gathering by Anne Enright
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Book Reviews of The Gathering
Book Review: A bitter little pill of a book.
Summary: 4 Stars
There are some books which I enjoy a lot as I read them. Later, however, when I put them down I find that I hardly remember what they had to say.
The Gathering is a little bit of the opposite experience. As I read, I was not at all sure what it was that I was supposed to be reading. It is fairly difficult to access, and not terribly forgiving of lapsed attention. Mostly I found myself saying to myself: "Why? Why did this win the Man Booker Prize?" But then somewhere towards the end, Enright pulls a magic trick. The book wraps itself up somehow, and is at once something shining. Something, dare I say it, which would like to fly. But still, I was not really sure that this was enough. It came so late in the book and what came before that moment was so leaden, I was not sure what I wanted to think. I mean, what I wanted to think about the overall experience.
Given time, the experience of reading the book has settled a little bit. I find that instead of growing more distant, I actually feel closer to the novel. I like it more. I have the impulse to buy another book by Enright. I am willing to forgive The Gathering its sharp edges and elbows.
And boy oh boy does this book have sharp elbows. It is a bitter little pill of a novel. Just like its main character, it resists sympathy and identification. Enright uses fantasy, disjointed narrative, unpleasant people doing unpleasant things-- pretty much every device that you can imagine to force the reader back outside the text. It makes for such a strange combination because she writes with such lyrical prose and such a delicate hand that you expect to find the book yielding. The contrast is very interesting, but in the end I am not sure how successful The Gathering really is-- largely for that reason.
I remain surprised that it won the Man Booker Prize. I took a look at the reviews on Amazon, and am not shocked to find them universally savage. An Irish female writer dealing with the subject of a dysfunctional family has a certain flavor to it-- carries a load of expectation. Those poor readers who go into it expecting The Book of Ruth or some other typical Oprah pick are going to be angry, not just disappointed. Some bad things happen, but often the narrator is just cranky. You are not allowed to feel that you have understood the past; sometimes the main character just makes things up. No catharsis, no redemption, no Irish brogue. The prose is pretty, but pretty like a snake in the grass is pretty. It glitters and it hisses and it does not really let you touch its skin.
This book reminds me of myself in truly black rages-- when I want to share nothing with nobody and go through the past as though I were reading a grocery list. In those moods, I would pull the head off of anyone who tried to sympathize or pretended to understand. This book has the mean reds.
But then that lightness at the end-- I don't know. I still need to think about this one a while longer.
In summary, for me, interesting. I am impressed, but have doubts. Please be aware of what you are getting before you start to read the novel. There is nothing worse than biting into what you think is a raspberry and getting a wasabi pea. Think bitter and think dark and you will be better prepared.
Book Review: NOT ALL IS HUNKY DORY IN THIS WORLD OF ATTACHMENT/DETACHMENT
Summary: 4 Stars
I had read Enright's collection of short stories before picking up this novel at Kinokuniya's impulse buys, but not even the agility of those voices could have prepared me for this staggering work.
Ostensibly, the theme is a straightforward one. "The Gathering" is about an Irish woman's reflex to the death of a loved one, as her larger family--those whom she "did not choose to love, but loved nonetheless"--comes together for the funeral. Her memories, denials, justifications are put into play in a tapestry of some very inventive prose. The setting is murky and could therefore have been an overwhelmingly despondent one (the last thing we need is yet another weepy saga) but the lightness of Enright's words marks a remarkable intelligence, a gift for rapier observation. It conjures up an image of her sitting down with her drafts, poring over her sentences, herding them into neatly austere lines. Which, goodie goodie, makes for a delicious read.
But I will not dote without reservation as the other reviewers have done so far (a feast of all 5 stars). Half-way through, I began to hope that we would overcome the clever detachment that pervades the novel, but the author barricades her characters until the very end. As much as I tried to play along, I felt that some of the descriptions became overwrought, especially erotic ones that anointed themselves as literary objet d'art instead of contributing to the characters. Which quickly got tedious. At times, I had had enough of all the talk of 'gonads' and longed for someone to hold a toothbrush or fling open a window.
I suppose this lack of tenderness was deliberate, given the theme of a woman's resolve and imagination as tools for coping, but overdo it and you'll leave the most avid reader bereft. Maybe Enright's very point was to create a book that unapologetically chronicled how numbing and emotionally bankrupt some dysfunctional families can be, and I have known enough Irish to think this possible--not to be stereotypical or anything. But as I found myself simmering lovingly over sentences, wondering if certain depictions would ever be this funny or well-baked again, I left with little interest in learning anything further about the protagonist.
Were a film to be made from The Gathering, it would undoubtedly end up in the suave cadre of something like The Hours. Great overlaps in tone and theme: an ethereal exploration of love, suicide, family. But in the same vein, The Gathering, too, is polarizing if not downright perplexing. My right brain suggested that its insouciant prose is a victory for literature and the hallmark of a great writer, but my left brain frequently looked at the watch longing for a Simpsons rerun.
As such, it is a fine novel and comes highly recommended, but make sure you have the appetite for this riveting slosh of emotions.
Book Review: Literary, readable, and profound--what's not to like
Summary: 4 Stars
Enright explores the inner life of a family, through the eyes of a self-confessed unreliable narrator. Enright mixes together the fallacy of memories in general, the particular fallibility of childhood memories, the malleability of the past, and the license a novelist has to create a "memory" for her characters.
Enright's narrator (Veronica)is a middle-class Irish married woman with two children, a dozen siblings (each damaged in his or her own way), a mother who suffered a nervous breakdown during Veronica's childhood--and never quite recovered, and suffers from typical middle-age, middle-class angst. Enright adds hints of sexual abuse, and sets the entire story at a defining moment in Veronica's life--the suicide by drowning of her favorite brother, which in turn leads to a crisis in her own marriage.
In her attempt to discover the truth about her own life--she has discovered that she is living her life in "inverted commas, as in going "home" to her "loving" husband, and having "sex"--she searches her memory, family lore, half remembered scenes from her childhood, and buried memories of her brother's sexual abuse at the hands of a family friend--and hints of repressed memories of her own abuse by that same friend.
Enright succeeds in weaving together these multiple strands into a thoroughly readable story. That is not to say this is an easy read--Enright jumps in and out of the present without warning, and Veronica is at times apparently reliable, only to end up confessing that none of what she just described happened--or at least it probably didn't, or in any event, she has no idea if it did or not, but thinks it should have. But isn't that the way the mind really works--seamlessly weaving past, present and predicted future into what we call reality. Isn't that the basis of the Holy Trinity--via St. Augustine--only the present is real--the past is only a memory and thus exists only in your mind, and the future hasn't happened yet. However, you can slice time so finely, that the present moment is infinitesimally short...and thus really doesn't exist either. Yet we are undoubtedly real.
Similarly, while Enright's Veronica may not be sure what happened in the past, has only the vaguest grasp of what is going to come in the future, and is somewhat hazy on the here and now--the portrait which emerges is a very convincing one of a real family.
Highly recommended.
Book Review: Enright's transcendent prose makes up for the book's weaknesses
Summary: 4 Stars
For the first 50 pages of "The Gathering," I disliked the book. I thought Veronica, the narrator, was off-putting and repulsively bitter, and it almost seemed as though Enright didn't want me, as a reader, to feel engaged in the book. But yet something pushed me to keep reading: Enright's beautiful, occasionally amusing, spot-on prose. There are at least 10-15 turns of phrase in "The Gathering" that struck me as some of the most insightful things ever said, even when they're about mundane things (e.g., "jelly impersonating fruit").
So I kept reading, and Enright's prose continued to pull me forward. I came to sympathize with Veronica a little more, though her intense bitterness toward her parents, siblings, husband, and other relatives remained mystifying. Enright also has a strange, unaccountable fixation on sex--not just sex itself, but the mechanics and body parts and minutiae involved. Not something I would expect from a female author and narrator. Her mentions of it stood in stark contrast to and unpleasantly interrupted the otherwise beautiful prose. Thankfully, the fixation diminished somewhat toward the end of the novel. Or maybe I just came to overlook it. While I initially wondered how on earth this book could have won the Booker, by the end I realized why.
Not everyone will like her stream of consciousness style, and some have commented that it's hard to keep track of the frequent jumpings of time, place, and character. However, I didn't find it hard to follow, and in fact I enjoyed her technique.
"The Gathering" is a quick read, but not an easy read per se. It can't be easily described or contained in a critical box--if I had to describe what it's "about", I don't think I could. It's about everything and nothing all at once. But I would recommend it, with the caveats I've mentioned, if only for the prose alone.
Book Review: A secretive family history in very well-written prose
Summary: 4 Stars
Veronica Hegarty is one of 12 children. When her brother Liam dies, the nine surviving children gather in the parental house for the wake. The period before, during and after the wake is described through the eyes of Veronica, who was Liam's closest sister, but even she could not save him from the drink and self-destruction that ultimately lead to his suicide. The story flips backwards and forwards between their childhood, young adulthood and the period after the death of Liam, when Veronica has to come to terms with the events from the past that led to Liam's ultimate self-desctruction. It also shows the problems that Veronica encouters in her marriage during the months after the funeral when she has to come to terms with the death of her closest brother.
The book very well describes the chemistry and behavioural patterns that rule the interaction between a whole flock of grown-ups that shared their youth ("Don't tell Mammy!"). The prose is smooth where it should be, funny at times, but can also hurt and the author is not afraid of showing both the loving and selfish sides of the main character. All in all a worthy winner of the Booker Prize.