The Gathering

Anne Enright uses her compelling and unique Irish voice to tell the story of a large Irish family, individually and collectively haunted by its past.

The Gathering refers to the wake that follows the death of Liam, a once-beloved brother and son, whose potential was never realized. Liam's sister, Veronica, examines his senseless death, telling the story of this "embarrassingly" large family by uncovering some of its demons. Veronica narrates from the various perspectives of her present position as an unfulfilled mother and wife, angry and resentful daughter, annoyed adult sister, as well as that of her younger childhood self, trying to make sense of the events that ultimately shaped this family into its current dysfunctional state. Veronica uses the wake to force her to make sense of the unfulfilled lives of herself, Liam, and the other family members.

Themes of sexual identity, family loss, and guilt, are articulately explored from a variety of angles. Character and theme dominate the plot so those looking for a linear plot should probably keep looking. Others willing to lose themselves in a unique style where memory is used to create the sense of cause and effect, should be quite satisfied with this evocative novel told in a very singular voice.

I was given this book and had no preconceptions about the author. But what a writer! She impressed me time after time.

Without spoiling it for you (but while still responding to the undeservedly harsh criticisms here on the the store review page) I would say that the protagonist, Veronica, goes through an ironic shift from criticism of her family to self-insights that the author surprises her readers with. The structure of The Gathering is marvellous and must have taken an enormous amount of concentration - I can scarcely imagine the drive Enright clearly possesses.

I would love to discuss more the relationship between Veronica and Liam (her almost-twin brother), but I don't want to take the joy and torment of this book from you.

Let me just say that I finished reading The Gathering a few weeks ago, and am now here on the store to buy Enright's other books because I feel forlorn in the evenings without her.

I'm not really sure why this book won the Man Booker Prize... I was not impressed by it at all. I didn't really like it, and for a short book (under 300 pages), it seemed dragged out and dull in sections. There were hints of great secrets and revelations to come, but none were revealed. The description of the book was more interesting than the book itself. The narrator was a rather unlikable woman and the "resolution" (hardly the right word for this ending) was terribly weak. All in all, it was well-written, but unsatisfying.

Skimming through the reviews that have preceded mine I find myself amused by the passion this book has generated. It seems safe to warn any prospective reader that one thing is certain: you will either love or you will hate this novel. The passionate negativity The Gathering has generated is telling, and is I believe due in part to the uncomfortable depths it brings the reader. Enright's book is not a comfortable read. Her book is about Human emotion. She explores her subject with an unflinching directness and power that left this reader unable to tolerate more than a few pages at a time. The plot is of minor importance, really only a literary device allowing the author a framework within which to do due her real work. The novel uses the death of a sibling and the gathering together of an extended family as a vehicle to explore the intense emotions and distant memories these events provoke in the central character. This Enright achieves with brilliance. She has a seemingly magical talent for using language to evoke in the reader a sense of her character's physic experience with all its ambiguity, ambivalence, and irrationality. Emotion is messy stuff and Enright does not shy away from the refuse and detritus. She takes us into the mist strewn land of child hood memory deftly exploring the boundary lands between reality and fiction. Don't expect definitive answers or tidy explanations for what "really" happened. If you are hoping for certainty at the end of the novel you will be disappointed. This is not an easy read. The comments from reviewers bragging about how they read the book in one sitting left me shaking my head. This book is not for the reader who can only give it 2 hours or for the reader who reads 100+ novels a year. It took me 3 weeks to read, and even then I felt that I needed to re-read it from start to finish if I expected to appreciate its full richness. I will admit that I did struggle at times with where Enright was taking me. There were a number (not many) of times when I simply had to move on because I could not follow her. But because of the richness and truth of the rest of the book I assumed that my failure to take meaning from these passages had more to my own failings as a reader than to the writer's "self-indulgence". I also did not find the novel "disjointed" as many reviewers have complained. I found the shifts between present and past seamless and close to my own experience of consciousness. Please, if you commit yourself to reading this book, take your time, taste and digest each word, each sentence, one at a time, and ride with the emotions that this writing evokes.

In historical study there are two types of literature. Secondary sources are written based on the original writings which are known as Primary sources. If you want to lern about the earliest Roman Emperors this source is indispensable. True, some of it is not historical and Suetonius is somewhat of a gossip monger at times, seeing as he explains in detail the various sexual appetites of each Caesar as well as other deviant behaviour. Still, this is one of the foremost primary sources about those famous Romans and most of the history books written on the Caesars are standing on Suetonius' shoulders.

Perhaps those from a family of 9, like myself, can relate to the Gathering in ways hidden from others. I savored this book rather than devoured it, tasting phrases and happenstance that echoed from my life in a small New York town where relatives and siblings were omnipresent and secrets tucked in corners behind silent doors.

In a country of 2-child families, The Gathering gives a glance of the complex and rich life of an Irish (or Italian or South American) family of many children. Open yourself up to the experience, if only vicariously.

Although set within a large dysfuntional Irish family, this speaks to the famlies of the world. Any time "shameful" secrets are allowed to fester, they shape lives and deaths, and guilty conscious' as ANNE ENRIGHT so powerfully illustrates in The Gathering. Just when you think you have it all perfectly in place, WHAM!. A curve I certainly didn't see coming. Love,bonds even death can't break,addiction's,mental illness, it has it all. A fine weekend's read.The Portable VirginThe Wig My Father Wore What Are You Like?: A Novel The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch: A Novel

I did not like this book. The writing is tedious and obscure. The narrator is completely self-absorbed and extremely judgmental -- a thoroughly unlikeable voice to endure for page after page. Nothing was ever really resolved. I really can't say much except I'm relieved to have finished this one so I can move on to read something else. A book shouldn't be something to endure, it should be something to explore and enjoy. This one was neither.

The Gathering gives us a glimpse into an Irish family, shares a window into the Irish soul, illuminates a flicker of our shared humanity. I pulled myself right into the family's drudgery, their painful past and difficult present. The peculiarities of each character and each moment still haunt me, long after I have finished the book.

After reading this book, I hugged it. I physically hugged it. Like one of my children.

If you want a story that will make you hurt alongside the characters and wrench out that which every family buries, you will treasure this. There are no comparisons to Anne Enright's work. Hers is a rare and beautiful voice that can only be cherished on its own.

The Gathering is full of psychological insights rendered primarily through the interior monologue of the narrator, Veronica Hegarty. Her recollections inform present perceptions while acknowledging the fallibility of memory, perceived truth, and even love. The tragic death of her brother provides the real world event that anchors a search for definition and being. Veronica, approaching forty, is a kind of conduit between two very different generations in Ireland -- her mother's and her children's. She very ably depicts the Ireland of her childhood, a place that was (in retrospect) about to radically change.

The house she grew up in is like her family of origin "all extension and no house" -- the result of a series of unplanned add-ons. She examines the role of upbringing and circumstances in a family constellation of many different personalities forming one dysfunctional system where needs and wants tend to be only vaguely recognized. The tension between character and chance events helps make sense of her unfolding tale of tragedy. Veronica reconstructs her brother's life gone wrong - where were the early clues to his eventual demise? Where does the sin originate? Tracing back to her grandmother's generation she pieces together the past from scraps of memory and informed conjecture. Veronica's mysterious grandmother becomes a figure that is easier to imagine in vivid colors and she looks for clues in that earlier generation to flesh out her brother's destiny. Although her mother was a more constant presence growing up, her bland and dutiful existence, hobbled by the demands of a large unplanned family, leaves a vacuum that even Veronica's prodigious imagination cannot fill. "My mother is such a vague person, it is possible she can't even see herself. " Responding to the details of an everyday life populated by a large brood of children apparently leaves no time for self definition. All of this is framed by powerful incidental and localized metaphor which has the effect of rendering Veronica's internal life more tangible.

As the book progresses the style and directness of the writing mirror the increased surety of the narrator. All of this remembering, conjecturing and fantasizing helps her to frame her own relationships to husband and young children. In what ways does past determine future? In what ways is she (and her relationships) damaged? What is capable of being repaired? Imagination fleshes out the past allowing her to see the more defined reality of her own present life and relationships. We come to understand how events and relationships may shape us but our interior lives continue to work with this given material in ways that reshape and restructure.

Ultimately the past and present inform and re-inform each other in a reciprocal spiral until there is a compassionate grounding in the present and a more solid existence and future emerge. A very satisfying book.

Since this book won the Man Booker prize, I was expecting a great read. Instead I found the book tedious, vague (the main character characterizes herself as "vague," but this can be said of the whole book), and even irritating. It was a real downer both in subject matter and in its effect upon this reader. Gloomy subjects--especially family secrets, love/hate relationships among family members, death--can be dealt with in compelling ways, but the whole Irish clan in this book left me cold. And the pleasant little ending tacked on at the end bore no relationship to the rest of the book.

This is the story of the "gathering" of a large Irish family after the death of one of the brothers. It is told solely from the vantage point of one of the sisters, Veronica. The reader is shuttled back and forth through time and the vantage point of the narrator at different ages. One has to admire the writing for its brutal strength and originality. Enright is no-doubt-about-it brilliant in her use of language and in the depth of her analysis of human relationships. She does a fabulous job of examining the vagaries of memory and does well at conveying conflicting emotions. HOWEVER, the story is not only endlessly grim, it is hard to follow because of chronological leaps and bounds, and, worst of all, there is no let up on the gloom, no humor that I could detect. I just finished the book and I feel like I've had a long fruitless talk with a disturbed relative. So there, I recognize the extraordinary writing talent it took to produce this book, but I can't help wondering if a little Prozac might not be in order.

This story gives the reader an up close and personal view of one woman's grieving process. It is raw, because grief is raw. The story is disjointed and at times erratic, because grief can be disjointed and erratic. I think this book is brilliant. The author takes you through the hurricane of grieving, takes a few momnets of respite in the eye, and then catapults the reader back into the storm. The author makes it very clear at the end that the reader has been given nothing more than the narrator's grief. If at times it is jolting to accept the rawness of the descriptions or reconcile the narrator's hostile take on the world, it is because the reader is not experienceing the narrator's entire life expereice, only the grief. To be able to spotlight this emotion, so often trivialized or alternatively aggrandized, Enright gets it just right. Like I said, brilliant.

I read a number of reviews on this book before writing this, and found something in each one to agree. I think if you pick one review each across the 1-5 stars and average out across all of them, you'll get a fair assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of this book. What I am going to try and do thus is present a balanced review, which pretty much represents my "average feeling" about the book.

Firstly, let me very briefly summarize the plot: the book revolves around the life of one of the nine surviving children of an Irish family, her reminiscences (real and imaginary) of her life and those of her family, and in particular her recently deceased brother. The "dysfunctional family story" which has been much bandied by a number of people is not strictly true, because this is really the woman's story, with the family naturally taking a prominent position given their size and range of "experiences".

The positives first then: Enright really does seem to have a "fresh" style of writing - I got hooked into the book right away, and read the first third at one quick go. Very surprisingly though, the freshness goes stale very quickly, and I found it genuinely tedious to go through the rest of the book. But we were talking of positives here, so let's get back there: the book is littered with some stylistic gems, such as the one quoted by another reviewer here: "All our parents were mad in those days. There was something about just the smell of us growing up that drove them completely insane." Enright, when she chooses to, can create really well defined characters, such as the protagonist, whose nuances - physical, mental, and emotional, are beautifully unveiled through her thoughts and actions.

The negatives: above all, Enright has no ability to use the non-linear narrative style to her advantage. On the contrary, it severely detracts from the book, making it a rather complex and painful read. A conscious or unconscious, but negative either way, fallout of this structure was that the book's dramatic arc was entirely absent - it just didn't feel like a build-up to something, instead remaining at a near constant sort of intensity (which is high largely) throughout. This might not bother other readers, but it really takes away a lot for me, because I like to and want to look forward to something - something to keep me turning the pages. On her style, while there were a number of gems in the book, there were as many, or maybe more occasions when the line was crossed and the prose became completely outlandish and pretentious. And finally, while the protagonist's character was very well detailed, almost all others were little more than silhouettes, leaving too much to the imagination, which was not a positive in this case given all the clutter that Enright was creating in the book.

Overall, I felt disappointed with the book, but I don't think I will give up on the author - yet. This book reminded me of all the mediocrities churned out by Rushdie, because I have read each one partly for the sake of the few gems which I know I can be assured of, but more importantly in the hope that there might just be another "Midnight's Children" between the covers. I sense that Enright's masterpiece might come too, and I look forward to reading that someday.

One the the overriding issues or themes in Anne Enright's book THE GATHERING is that of betrayal.
The character Veronica (the narrator) feels betrayed by her grandmother, her husband, and ultimately by her dead brother Liam. I would venture to say that she feels betrayed by her mother also, but her feelings for her mother are more complicated than that. She rather sees her mother as a non-entity - someone who popped out tons of children but didn't bother to raise them, choosing instead to "have a nervous breakdown" and become a victim - a non-player in Veronica's life.

When Veronica is eight or nine she, Liam and another older sister are sent to live with their grandparents Ada and Charlie. They become wild children - left much to their own devices. Veronica begins to fantasize about Ada and Charlie and a man who is always around, Nugent. Seeking a female mentor, Veronica places Ada at the center of a created love triangle. She watches Ada deal with life's daily challenges, Charlie's death, Nugent's constant visits and ultimately Liam's abuse. Veronica sees the abuse occurring in Ada's house and she believes without a doubt that Ada knows what Nugent is doing but does not stop it. Ada betrays Veronica (and of course Liam) and Veronica's silence over the many years betrays Liam. I think that this betrayal is the center of the story - Veronica of Liam. Do you agree?

But I've gotten off course..........

As an adult, Veronica feels betrayed by her husband - we learn that he may or may not have had an affair. It's one of those stories she tells us that she's not quite sure has occurred. Nonetheless, to soften the blow of her guilt toward Liam she accuses her husband of infidelity - she wants to be married and care for her two daughters but something inside her rebels and she becomes more despondent about her role (one she has chosen albeit) ......transferring her unhappiness to her relationship with her husband is a tool to hide the true despondency of her spirit. The reader wonders if she will reverse her feelings if she comes to gripe with Liam's death.

Then lastly, the most complicated of the betrayals is Veronica's feeling that Liam betrayed her. In the absence of parental love, Veronica looked to Liam for companionship, protection, and direction. She's tells us a story over and over again about young Liam's peeing into a fence and as he does it spatters across the mesh.....she believes he is wonderfully strange .....or perhaps in need of constant looking after; either way, she indelibly with him. They share lives through college and young adulthood then after Ada's death Liam begins to unravel and disappears for long bouts. He returns after long unexplained absences for stays with Veronica and her family but he is usually drunk, unkept and unruly. What happended to their bond, Veronica thinks. Why has he abandoned her .......... or as we will learn why did she abandon him?

Do you agree with my premise? Do you think Liam is Veronica's savior or her needy child?

Man Booker. OK. The writing is gorgeous. Plot, characters? If you have a tendency to depression this is not the book for you! It is a relentlessly and ultimately tiring dark tale of Irish life: too much sex, too many children, too much booze and death, death, death. The young girl picturing maggots swelling inside her dead grandfather was the end for me. Nope. Couldn't take it.

My mother gave me this book a few months ago.

*Mom: I can't believe I'm giving this book to my DAUGHTER, but I'm interested to see what you'll think of it.
Me: Why wouldn't you give it to me?
Mom: It's uh... There's a lot of uh... Well, just read it and you'll see.

I took this to mean it has a lot of sex in it.

So, it sat on my shelf for a while, because I had a few other books in the queue. Honestly, I love a good sprawling family novel, but the description on the back just didn't grab me for some reason.

We went on vacation last week and I threw it in the suitcase since I knew I'd be finishing the book I was currently reading. I picked it up on the drive back and noticed for the first time that it won the Booker Award. "Well, that has to be a good sign", I thought. It wasn't.

I don't usually read the reviews here before reading a book, because I like to form my own opinions first. I didn't read the reviews here in this case either, and it's funny that as I read this book the words "tedious and self-indulgent" kept going through my head. I see that mentioned quite a few times here on the reviews, and I think it's interesting that these were the exact descriptions I came up with as well. Let me also say that I very rarely dislike a book enough to write a negative review of it. As a matter of fact, this is the first negative book review I have submitted to the store.

Much of what I could say about the book has already been said very well by other reviewers. I won't give a synopsis of the "plot" since that has already been done numerous times and I don't have anything more interesting to contribute about that, especially since I'm not even sure what the plot was.

As many have mentioned, the writing style is disjointed. This is not something I am generally opposed to in a book. I happen to adore The Time Traveler's Wife and Water for Elephants, which I think both incorporated a brilliant use of this technique. It's very effective if done well and for a reason. In The Gathering, there is certainly a reason to use the technique. The author is trying to convey the main character's disjointed and uncertain memories of her and her families' past. One would think this style would suit quite nicely, but it falls disappointingly short, making the book difficult to read and tiresome. A difficult book is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case there seems to be no reward for slogging through the jumbled and, maybe (or maybe not) imagined scenes of the past.

We are never sure if Victoria is remembering or imagining what happened as a child. We are also unclear about her telling of the story of her grandmother Ada. There is no way she could know the story of Ada, so we can be fairly sure these stories are meant to be read as fabricated. As a result, this part of the story has to be telling us more about Victoria's character than Ada's, but what is the purpose? Both of these devices are so confusing and ineffective that we just don't care after a while. Eventually it seems that we are just being beat over the head with them. Yes! I get it that she's not sure of her childhood memories, she has an imagined life for her grandmother. I GET IT! Enough already!

I'm not generally opposed to graphic sex scenes either, but the ones in this book are again, confusing, disjointed, and well... seemingly pointless. Sex is painted with an angry brush, and we are never quite sure where this anger is coming from. What is its purpose and what does it lend to the story? How can we figure it out when we're not even sure what really happened? I'm still not sure, but it makes for a very dark read. I found myself comparing this aspect of the story to The Crimson Petal and the White, which also had abundant and dark sex scenes. In that case however, they were an integral part of the story. The story could not have been told without them. They made sense. In The Gathering, they just don't make sense. I feel the author must have had a reason, but that reason is lost in the (often) awkward prose, disjointed narrative, and dreary and confused "soul searching" of the main character.

I'm not going to say much about the portrayal of the characters. I will say that I found them mostly incomprehensible and unlikable.

About halfway through the book (after what seemed like a year of reading) the "secret" is revealed. That in itself was disappointing because (yawn), it is so trite and expected. At that point I did have a glimmer of hope though. Maybe the plot would turn around. Maybe something would now happen and the seemingly pointless ramblings would coalesce into a well defined, or at least a somewhat recognizable theme. Unfortunately this never happened (or hasn't so far, as I'm not done yet). The story wanders around some more and culminates into the wake of brother Liam, again finding no purpose or redemption.

I have, maybe, 50 pages left to go in the book, but I relented on my self imposed "rule" and decided to check the reviews here to see if there was any compelling reason to finish the book. I probably will, just because I find it hard to abandon a book, but I now have no hope that anything will redeem the book in my eyes.

I called my mom to tell her my opinions so far.

Me: Hey, remember that book you gave me to read?
Mom: No, which one?
Me: The Gathering
Mom: I don't remember it.
Me: It's about a woman whose brother dies, I guess...
Mom: That's not ringing a bell for me.
Me: Let me read the back to you. [I read the description on the back]
Mom: I still don't remember it. Are you sure it was me who gave it to you?
Me: Yeah, you said it had a lot of sex in it.
Mom: Oh yeah, that one. I remember it had a lot of sex, but don't remember what it was about.
Me: It wasn't about anything really.
Mom: Oh, okay.

*I feel I should note, in the spirit of the book, that I may not be remembering these conversations accurately.

BTW- if anyone would like this book I'll send it to you for the cost of shipping only. I usually give my old books to friends or relatives, but I can't fathom recommending this book to anyone. If you have read the reviews and would still like to give it a read, let me know. :o)

This is not an easy read as previous reviewers have indicated. The prose is lyrical and compelling, but the main character's imaginings about her grandmother's life are off putting. Eventually it becomes clear why the writer included these sections. The reward for pushing through the difficult passages is an integrated story which urges readers to ponder the twin roles of memory and imagining in this fictional work as well as in the integration our own life stories.

An excellent book. Dark, midnight dark, but filled with heart, and the writing is absolutely stunning. The depth with which Anne Enright portrays her characters is impressive and as a result they are completely believable, beyond believable, in fact, they are alive. She makes it look easy, organic, effortless -- the mark of a wonderful writer.

Actually I would give this book no stars if it were an option. I will not try to re-sell this book or pass it on, as I considered it a huge waste of time. A guest at my house handed the book back to me after reading only 100 pages. I then began reading it and kept reading thinking there had to be some merit to this award winning book other than some well structured sentences.

There is nothing positive I can think to say about this book, no character development, historical or cultural information of any value and seemingly no point to the story. I liked the cover?

WARNING: Do not throw away your money and especially your time by buying this book.

the writing is mediocre and simply a mess of words. Do not waste your money, check out at the library if you must - there were 12 other books longlisted for the Booker prize and certainly the "Welsh Girl" and the wonderful "Gift of Rain" would have been far better choices. What criteria was used in selecting?

I picked this up at the bookstore while in search of something interesting to read and I figured that the Booker Prize emblem was a good sign.

I was disappointed to find it a rather dull and tedious book to read, but because I can't just leave a book unfinished, I read it through.

In all honesty, I was already bored with it by the second chapter. While the author made attempts for an unreliable narrator, she falls flat with Veronica. Everything seems repetitive and random, to the point where the main character seems like she doesn't even care about the story she's telling.

Another thing would be the disjointed jumping of the story line, back and forth through the past and future. That coupled with an overuse of imagery leaves one with a headache.

Finally, there are the characters. While I'm usually a fan of the sprawling family saga, there was absolutely no character development here. I couldn't really distinguish any of the Hegarty siblings from each other and they certainly didn't interact the way you'd expect a family like that to (regardless of how dysfunctional). It was like they were just going through the motions.

In fact, the only two characters I felt any empathy for was Liam (who died before the main plot even began) and the little boy at the end (who barely even said a word).

I stopped reading Ms. Enright's book The Gathering, or 50 Names for Male and Female Anatomy Sure to Make My Readers Giggle Sheepishly about halfway through. Choosing to quit a novel is something I rarely ever do, however, I felt I MUST put in my two-cents about The Gathering or A Creative Writing Stream-of-Consciousness Exercise Gone Terribly Awry. This book was incoherent. Reading it was like taking a journey into the main character's muddled imagination. The Sound and the Fury was easier to follow than this garbled plot. The flowery descriptions were bordering on the ridiculous and I grew tired of trying to figure out whether the main character's reminiscences were actual occurrences or false memories. The Gathering is a pretentious, nonsensical piece of writing.

Like probably most folks here I am a voracious reader, so when I cannot finish a book because it is so utterly boring then it must be really bad! I listened to the audiobook on my long work commute and at some point during disk 6 I just decided I would rather listen to the passing cars than to this drivel. Not only is the writing insipid but the reader.reads.about.as.slowly.as.you.can.possibly.imagine.

A miserable depressing book, full of adolescent fixation on sex, and cheap bad language. It wasted my time and money. Iwould not have finished it if I did not have to give a report to my book group. Very poor. Irish noir.

Reading this book was purgatory. I picked it up entirely by mistake because some-one said it was 'partly a ghost story' and I adore ghost stories. Unfortunately the ghosts in this book (if there are any) are purely metaphorical. And oh dear---what a dreary catalogue of nothingness! And such pretentious prose. Reading this book, you begin to feel that it should be consigned to a psychiatrist's bottom drawer---what's wrong with the woman? Read (or rather don't read!) the two execrable paragraphs at the start of chapter nine. The female protagonist sits on a train, sees a complete stranger opposite her sitting in 'sexual sunlight' (someone please explain to me what sexual sunlight is!) and then starts fantasising --or perhaps observing---stuff about him having an erection. And the way she describes it, 'blood pooling in his lap' , 'thick oblong'----it's vile. I'm not a prude---but why oh why put this into the book? And the whole novel's like that---a woman obsessing unhealthily about bodies, when she's not trying to write like James Joyce (and failing.) I loathed this book and the fact that it won the Booker Prize is a mystery.

The nine surviving Hegarty siblings gather together in the family home in Dublin for the wake of their brother Liam. In the observance of a life now ended, Liam's sister Veronica (our narrator) recalls the past - both real and perhaps imagined - to try to understand the why and the how of Liam's life and death.

There are a number of different layers to this story and, although I read it in two sittings, I'll be rereading it to explore aspects I simply observed without necessarily understanding. The beauty of Ms Enright's prose is that you don't need to fully absorb the plot in order to undertake the journey. I found myself stepping outside the story simply to admire the language, and then hastening back inside again to keep up with the action. This is a story you can read quickly: the life and death of Liam; Veronica's observational angst; the likeable and less likeable family members are each cleanly (if not always clearly) presented.

There is more than one story in this novel, and if I tell you which one I read it may well detract from your own reading pleasure. My advice to intending readers is to approach this book as you would any large family: what you see on first acquaintance is not necessarily all there is.

I hope you enjoy the novel as much as I did.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

A very odd, wordy, and chaotic book. This was the first book chosen for our new book club, and it was such a disappointment to all of our 14 members. We chose the book based on its recommendations and awards, however were sorely disappointed.

This book was dreadful. The story went back and forth from the present to the past and was very confusing. The big secret is not such a secret since you can see it coming for a mile. Everything in this book has a sexual tint to it -- so much so that I just wanted to say enough already! I didn't want to finish the book but did in the hopes that somehow I might end up liking it. WRONG! It was a waste of both money and time. Don't bother with this one. There are better books out there.

The book description sounded so good and promising - oh, well. The storyline was tired, the writing was just so-so ordinary, characters completely forgettable - basically, the book was not good at all in any way. I mean how original is using child molestation as a catalyst for all bad things - really? - please. I cannot believe that this won the Booker, but then again, The Inheritance of Loss also had won, so I should not be so surprised. Even if the book is not good, I usually am able to find something, anything that I liked about it. No such luck here.

Erica Asahan Wrote:

The narrative is superbly done. A little quirky at times. The book would be hightly charged if it had stayed in a much more contemporary context. I love the ending, very cool indeed. Great Book, I will highly recommending it to my book club members.

Erica Asahan

I agree with AC, who wrote in an earlier post preferring Ian McEwan's ON CHESIL BEACH to Enright's THE GATHERING. I've also often been struck by both banal and strident qualities in Enright's work. In a curious way her prose feels as if it's at war with itself: despairing, static, insistent and dull, and yet at the same time melodramatic and histrionic,"the ground boiling with corpses" and "tangled bones" being just two examples of phrases in THE GATHERING that feel both inaccurate and overwrought.

A intimate, very inteligently and with a lot of sensitivity written book, one you would want to have in order to be able to read it again. I am a fast reader and I've tried to slow myself down, just to make it last longer.

It is with profound regret that I put down this book and walked away. I had had such high hopes of it being a good read having won the Booker Prize and all. However, I found it so disjointed, the narrative so fractioned, that I abandoned it after 150 pages. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many books I have not finished in all of my years of voracious reading. It just left me feeling "Why? Why bother...."

Enright provides the best synopsis, even the best analysis of THE GATHERING, in its very first sentence: "I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother's house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure it really did happen." Brace yourselves, folks, that attempt is exactly what this book is. The narrator would *like* to write something down, but you know, she has insomnia, her brother's dead, her mother's vague, her husband's not electrifying, her grandmother's sex life isn't entirely clear -- she's got things on her mind, she can't get around to it. On page 142, she reminds herself she meant to write it down, says it's time to write it down, then writes a few Lifetime-Channel-type secrets down, all the while prepping a trap door beneath your feet, because, you know, we're not sure it really did happen.

Fire or retire that Booker Prize panel. Enright can write a sentence -- there are 45 striking sentences in this book -- but loses her way in a paragraph and is clueless about assembling a story. What she thinks a novel is and what people who love fiction want to read are light-years apart.

What can be taken from this book can be garnered from the jacket or the back-cover. Enright finally reveals, about 140 pages in, the "devastating secret" of three generations. While some chapters brilliantly capture complex emotions and boiling sexual tension, the rest of the book is just long, drawn-out prose that dotes on dysfunction in familial relationships and in sexual behavior. By the end of the novel, I found that the horse had been beaten into such a beautiful pulp--yet, I didn't care any more.

In THE GATHERING Anne Enright has created characters that are 3-dimensional studies in the literary tradition, with haunting and disturbing family dynamics.. The book contains beautiful imagery as it explores the passions and histories of Veronica and her family. Two of my favorites:
"There was something about the smell of us growing up that drove (our parents) completely insane." and "The ground is boiling with corpses, the ground is knit out of their tangled bones.")

I give this book five stars because the author deals with the meaty issues of the inner self... was able to get the inside information.

We can fail to digest the full implication of what child abuse contributes to the adult behavior... but who could grasp that fully? Dr. Thomas Moore does as he exploes the history of an abused girl through her carer as a prostitute to become a friend of Hillary Clinton, in his new book, ... a rare and gifted literary effort which reveals much of the conflict and resolution possible. Try  for further reading regarding the nature of the denied issue of today.

I haven't ever written a review for the store, but when I saw that this book had not received five stars I was compelled to add my two cents. This is writing at the far end of fierce, and I would not recommend it to the faint of heart out for a good read. It is the unvarnished truth, a withering view of a landscape that does not suffer pretense. I am grateful to Ms Enright for her incandescent tale. This is familiar ground, and I welcomed the light.

Fear of delivering spoilers limits my own commentary. This novel, about the death of a sibling and the failure of the adult world to protect the children it creates, is a literary achievement of beauty and horror and should be required reading for all who have children, care for children, or profess to love them.

The reviews here vary hugely between 1 to 5 - maybe that's because Anne Enright is a thought-provoking writer who is capable of generating a strong emotional response...I read the novel while travelling and found something in the narrative that went comfortably with my roaming state of mind - On the road, you tend to have time and quiet to look back and remember. In the novel, there is an important journey taking place in the mind of Veronica, the main character, and it is a journey that is raw and profound. Yes, it is a sad book. So sad it kicks you in the gut. But Enright has enough wit to make her characters lively and sometimes even funny. It is ultimately uplifting and true. If you are not afraid of a difficult story well told, read 'The Gathering'!

I will keep this brief because so many others who gave this book a poor rating described the problems so well. I just returned from my book club where we discussed this book. Out of 8 members, only 4 had the tenacity to make it to the end of this disjointed, dull, and painful read. The rest could not bear to finish it. I was expecting it to be sad given the subject matter, but since none of the characters are likable, it is not sad at all. Absolute case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
During the entire read, all I could think about were the poor authors who were "runners up" for the Booker award and then beat out by this uninteresting story.

This is the first book I have actually thrown away in years. I love to read, read probably 5 to 6 novels a month, but this book was awful! I kept thinking that surely I was missing something (after all, it did win the Man Booker,) but page after page of disconnected, harsh dialogue does not a novel make. I kept reading thinking the story would eventually redeem itself, but about two-thirds of the way through, I just threw it in the trash. And the disgusting, hate-filled references to sexual acts...way too many to count and way out there. If you love completely over the top books which are notable only because they shock, this is the book for you. Otherwise, there are too many great books out there to waste your time on this one.

I really expected (and wanted) to like this book. I was patient and kept reading, hoping to get to the part of the book where it took off and became interesting. But I honestly never ended up connecting with or caring that much about the characters. For me, this book was a disappointment.

Enright does an outstanding job with her rich characterizations, poetically sketched and lyrically described. Unfortunately, it is done at the sacrifice of plot as there is minimal activity in the book. Readers expecting anything less than an ambitious character-driven novel will be sorely disappointed. Ultimately, Enright executes well and achieves her goal. -- Aseem Giri, Author of "Imposters at the Gate: A Novel about Private Equity"

I expected more from a Man Booker prize winner. There are many clever sentences, but unfortunately, they do not add up to make a clever story. I feel fortunate that I did not pay money for this book, borrowing it from a friend instead.

Simply put, this is the story of an Irish woman, a very unhappy Irish woman, who wallows in the death of her brother, meanwhile placing all her family, both past and present, in a bleak, negative light.by recounting random and often made-up stories about them.

The low rating of this book is good evidence of the low intelligence of its readers. This is simply one of the most beautiful, intricate and evocative books you will ever read; though if you have no intuitive instinct for language, don't bother. There's something for everyone on the bookstore shelves. Some people should just move right along to Mills and Boon or Jackie Collins.

Unfortunately, this book looked much more intriguing than it read. My biggest complaint is that I was not led to care about any of the characters. I consider myself a compassionate person so this is very telling. Overall, the book was too disconnected to enjoy. Disconnected from itself and the reader.

A GATHERING takes place mostly in modern day Dublin but it could have been anyplace or time when a very large family was possible. This book looks back on the dynamics of this family after the children have grown up and especially at the relationship between the protaganist and her brother. She reviews her relationship with him and what went wrong in his life and if she might have saved him. It's a little dreary but realistic if you like that sort of thing.

I don't mind the occasional reference to love making etc. but after 86 pages of every slang, sordid and squalid entrance into body parts requiring the male, this book just decended into the junkyard of books that could have been something.

I did not like this book and neither did anyone in my book club. We felt the author wrote the character in such a detached state then we never knew how she really felt or if she in fact had experienced any of the events she described. The book was also all over the place and sometimes hard to follow.

Erica Asahan Wrote:

The narrative is superbly done. A little quirky at times. The book would be hightly charged if it had stayed in a much more contemporary context. I love the ending, very cool indeed. Great Book, I will highly recommending it to my book club members.

Erica Asahan

I agree with AC, who wrote in an earlier post preferring Ian McEwan's ON CHESIL BEACH to Enright's THE GATHERING. I've also often been struck by both banal and strident qualities in Enright's work. In a curious way her prose feels as if it's at war with itself: despairing, static, insistent and dull, and yet at the same time melodramatic and histrionic,"the ground boiling with corpses" and "tangled bones" being just two examples of phrases in THE GATHERING that feel both inaccurate and overwrought.

A intimate, very inteligently and with a lot of sensitivity written book, one you would want to have in order to be able to read it again. I am a fast reader and I've tried to slow myself down, just to make it last longer.

It is with profound regret that I put down this book and walked away. I had had such high hopes of it being a good read having won the Booker Prize and all. However, I found it so disjointed, the narrative so fractioned, that I abandoned it after 150 pages. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many books I have not finished in all of my years of voracious reading. It just left me feeling "Why? Why bother...."

Enright provides the best synopsis, even the best analysis of THE GATHERING, in its very first sentence: "I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother's house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure it really did happen." Brace yourselves, folks, that attempt is exactly what this book is. The narrator would *like* to write something down, but you know, she has insomnia, her brother's dead, her mother's vague, her husband's not electrifying, her grandmother's sex life isn't entirely clear -- she's got things on her mind, she can't get around to it. On page 142, she reminds herself she meant to write it down, says it's time to write it down, then writes a few Lifetime-Channel-type secrets down, all the while prepping a trap door beneath your feet, because, you know, we're not sure it really did happen.

Fire or retire that Booker Prize panel. Enright can write a sentence -- there are 45 striking sentences in this book -- but loses her way in a paragraph and is clueless about assembling a story. What she thinks a novel is and what people who love fiction want to read are light-years apart.

What can be taken from this book can be garnered from the jacket or the back-cover. Enright finally reveals, about 140 pages in, the "devastating secret" of three generations. While some chapters brilliantly capture complex emotions and boiling sexual tension, the rest of the book is just long, drawn-out prose that dotes on dysfunction in familial relationships and in sexual behavior. By the end of the novel, I found that the horse had been beaten into such a beautiful pulp--yet, I didn't care any more.

In THE GATHERING Anne Enright has created characters that are 3-dimensional studies in the literary tradition, with haunting and disturbing family dynamics.. The book contains beautiful imagery as it explores the passions and histories of Veronica and her family. Two of my favorites:
"There was something about the smell of us growing up that drove (our parents) completely insane." and "The ground is boiling with corpses, the ground is knit out of their tangled bones.")

I give this book five stars because the author deals with the meaty issues of the inner self... was able to get the inside information.

We can fail to digest the full implication of what child abuse contributes to the adult behavior... but who could grasp that fully? Dr. Thomas Moore does as he exploes the history of an abused girl through her carer as a prostitute to become a friend of Hillary Clinton, in his new book, ... a rare and gifted literary effort which reveals much of the conflict and resolution possible. Try  for further reading regarding the nature of the denied issue of today.

I haven't ever written a review for the store, but when I saw that this book had not received five stars I was compelled to add my two cents. This is writing at the far end of fierce, and I would not recommend it to the faint of heart out for a good read. It is the unvarnished truth, a withering view of a landscape that does not suffer pretense. I am grateful to Ms Enright for her incandescent tale. This is familiar ground, and I welcomed the light.

Fear of delivering spoilers limits my own commentary. This novel, about the death of a sibling and the failure of the adult world to protect the children it creates, is a literary achievement of beauty and horror and should be required reading for all who have children, care for children, or profess to love them.

The reviews here vary hugely between 1 to 5 - maybe that's because Anne Enright is a thought-provoking writer who is capable of generating a strong emotional response...I read the novel while travelling and found something in the narrative that went comfortably with my roaming state of mind - On the road, you tend to have time and quiet to look back and remember. In the novel, there is an important journey taking place in the mind of Veronica, the main character, and it is a journey that is raw and profound. Yes, it is a sad book. So sad it kicks you in the gut. But Enright has enough wit to make her characters lively and sometimes even funny. It is ultimately uplifting and true. If you are not afraid of a difficult story well told, read 'The Gathering'!

I will keep this brief because so many others who gave this book a poor rating described the problems so well. I just returned from my book club where we discussed this book. Out of 8 members, only 4 had the tenacity to make it to the end of this disjointed, dull, and painful read. The rest could not bear to finish it. I was expecting it to be sad given the subject matter, but since none of the characters are likable, it is not sad at all. Absolute case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
During the entire read, all I could think about were the poor authors who were "runners up" for the Booker award and then beat out by this uninteresting story.

This is the first book I have actually thrown away in years. I love to read, read probably 5 to 6 novels a month, but this book was awful! I kept thinking that surely I was missing something (after all, it did win the Man Booker,) but page after page of disconnected, harsh dialogue does not a novel make. I kept reading thinking the story would eventually redeem itself, but about two-thirds of the way through, I just threw it in the trash. And the disgusting, hate-filled references to sexual acts...way too many to count and way out there. If you love completely over the top books which are notable only because they shock, this is the book for you. Otherwise, there are too many great books out there to waste your time on this one.

This is a brilliantly translated form of Suetonius's "LIVES". Such clarity and definition, the complete essence of his writings are clearly communicated. An intruiging text emanating from intruiging Roman leaders.
A must read for any historian or student.

Ethan*

I really expected (and wanted) to like this book. I was patient and kept reading, hoping to get to the part of the book where it took off and became interesting. But I honestly never ended up connecting with or caring that much about the characters. For me, this book was a disappointment.

Enright does an outstanding job with her rich characterizations, poetically sketched and lyrically described. Unfortunately, it is done at the sacrifice of plot as there is minimal activity in the book. Readers expecting anything less than an ambitious character-driven novel will be sorely disappointed. Ultimately, Enright executes well and achieves her goal. -- Aseem Giri, Author of "Imposters at the Gate: A Novel about Private Equity"

I expected more from a Man Booker prize winner. There are many clever sentences, but unfortunately, they do not add up to make a clever story. I feel fortunate that I did not pay money for this book, borrowing it from a friend instead.

Simply put, this is the story of an Irish woman, a very unhappy Irish woman, who wallows in the death of her brother, meanwhile placing all her family, both past and present, in a bleak, negative light.by recounting random and often made-up stories about them.

The low rating of this book is good evidence of the low intelligence of its readers. This is simply one of the most beautiful, intricate and evocative books you will ever read; though if you have no intuitive instinct for language, don't bother. There's something for everyone on the bookstore shelves. Some people should just move right along to Mills and Boon or Jackie Collins.

Reading this book is a bit like being on scene in ancient Rome. The style is not what we are used to in contemporary biographies and that adds to the charm of this volume. The Caesars are exposed for inspection, warts and all. Suetonius breathes life into them as they strut across the stage of the Roman Empire.

Unfortunately, this book looked much more intriguing than it read. My biggest complaint is that I was not led to care about any of the characters. I consider myself a compassionate person so this is very telling. Overall, the book was too disconnected to enjoy. Disconnected from itself and the reader.

A GATHERING takes place mostly in modern day Dublin but it could have been anyplace or time when a very large family was possible. This book looks back on the dynamics of this family after the children have grown up and especially at the relationship between the protaganist and her brother. She reviews her relationship with him and what went wrong in his life and if she might have saved him. It's a little dreary but realistic if you like that sort of thing.

I don't mind the occasional reference to love making etc. but after 86 pages of every slang, sordid and squalid entrance into body parts requiring the male, this book just decended into the junkyard of books that could have been something.

I did not like this book and neither did anyone in my book club. We felt the author wrote the character in such a detached state then we never knew how she really felt or if she in fact had experienced any of the events she described. The book was also all over the place and sometimes hard to follow.

My book club made me read this. It is so overwritten it makes your stomach turn. Here's how grief is described: "I am a trembling mess from hip to knee. There is a terrible heat, a looseness in my innards that makes me want to dig my fists between my thighs. It is a confusing feeling -- somewhere between diarrhoea and sex -- this grief that is almost genital." This putrid and self-conscious style continues throughout.

Every once in awhile you get some good writing. For example, see pp. 26-27. There might be more, but I am thinking about risking my book club's wrath and seeing if there's an old Bewitched rerun on TV.

I have absolutely no clue as to what when on in this award winning??book. As hard as I tried I couldn't even finish it. All I can say is the Booker Award judge must have owed the author a favor. It was like sitting through an awful movie waiting for it to get better (and it never does) and then kicking yourself for wasting 2 hours of your life. Read something else.

First the good: Enright definitely has a keen sense of description, a poetic heart and a strong imagist sensibility.

But mostly, it was the bad: I cannot say how many times I wanted to slap around all her characters and scream "Get OVER yourself." Someone else called this self-indulgent and overwrought and I had to laugh, because when I finished this book, a friend asked what I thought and I answered with that those exact words!

Disappointing that this won the Booker.

Is this what one might consider experimental fiction? I am half-way to completion but I dread picking it up again. There are other books to enjoy.

So far, none of the characters interest me and I find the writing style tedious. I regret spending money on the hard back. If you want to read it, borrow it from the library then if you don't like it you can just drop it in the drop box.

I bought this book only because I collect Mann Booker Prize winners and I don't know what the author was thinking, but this is A VERY DIFFICULT READ. I never figured out EXACTLY what the secret was that caused her brother to kill himself, or what her STORY was about. I don't think I'm so unintelligent, I think the writer is so unskilled as a story teller that she couldn't tell the story. She seemed to be so wrought up in her writing that she forgor abot the story. I can't beleive that there wasn't something else written that would nab the Booker Prize.

I did not enjoy reading this book at all, and it was quite the chore just to finish it. For me, there was just too many flashbacks, and the main character's thoughts kept invading the story to the point that I could not follow along. Very disappointing read; this is the first time I've felt compelled to rate a book!

I read this book and kept reading in disbelief as to how bad I thought it was written!It dwells on sexual abuse and has no real family line.This was the first book I've ever thrown in the garbarge ever!Usually I'll pass it along to someone else but I really don't know of anyone else who would want it!I felt I'd thrown my money away on this book!

This book is confusing to say the least. It's hard to tell what events have really happened and which ones are fantasies of the main character. I expected a good book and instead just found myself waiting for a story to improve. I would not recommend this book.

I did not like this book at all. I never could quite figure out where she was going, or for that matter why. There were too many characters and I did not feel any of them were developed in such a way as to give the reader enough information to have a relationship with them. Very unsatisfying read.

An annoyingly narcissistic work. The writer thinks she's James Joyce. The narrator is obsessed with sex, hers and her imagined relatives'. If you don't care about the minor turmoils in the narrator's mind - and after about 50 pages I didn't - there's nothing else here.

I had high hopes for this book, but found it dull and pretentious. I didn't care about any of the characters and the big secret wasn't really that big. I wish I'd read all the reviews before buying this because it would have spared me adding this to my book collection.

This has to be one of the toughest reads ever. I have been reading this for a book club and I am having such a hard time reading it. The basis of the story is interesting; led me to believe I would enjoy the book. What a disappointment. Thought once the "secret" was out, it would get more interesting...NOT.
Not a book I would recommend to anyone...entire book club group feels it's difficult to read, as well (all adult women over 40).

I can't imagine how any reviewer could describe Enright's characters as vivid, since I didn't get a sense of who any of them were--not even the narrator. The author jumps around so much, that after a while, I just stopped caring about the story at all. Whether she talked about the past or the present, it was all pretty boring just the same--which is amazing since you would think a story involving so many siblings would be interesting. I regret this purchase. The best part about this book was that I resold it.

Anne Enright has created characters that resonate long after the book has been closed. Since I had the privilege of reading it in one sitting on a cross-country flight, I was able to absorb the beauty of its images, the 3-dimensional character studies, the haunting and enraging family dynamics without interruption, totally immersed in the passions and histories of Veronica and her family. This book is written in a meaty, organic style, rare to find (e.g., "There was something about the smell of us growing up that drove (our parents) completely insane." and "The ground is boiling with corpses, the ground is knit out of their tangled bones.")

The plot should not be revealed in a review but allowed to unfold in the reader's imagination. It is a complete, masterful work.