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AudibleInk - The Gathering
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List Price: $11.00
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Manufacturer: Grove/Atlantic
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FREE SHIPPING on Orders over $25!
Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Kindle Edition
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
Format: Kindle Book
Label: Grove/Atlantic
Manufacturer: Grove/Atlantic
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2007-11-02
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Release Date: 2007-11-02
Studio: Grove/Atlantic
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Editorial Reviews:
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In the taut latest from Enright (What Are You Like?), middle-aged Veronica Hegarty, the middle child in an Irish-Catholic family of nine, traces the aftermath of a tragedy that has claimed the life of rebellious elder brother Liam. As Veronica travels to London to bring Liam's body back to Dublin, her deep-seated resentment toward her overly passive mother and her dissatisfaction with her husband and children come to the fore. Tempers flare as the family assembles for Liam's wake, and a secret Veronica has concealed since childhood comes to light. Enright skillfully avoids sentimentality as she explores Veronica's past and her complicated relationship with Liam. She also bracingly imagines the life of Veronica's strong-willed grandmother, Ada. A melancholic love and rage bubbles just beneath the surface of this Dublin clan, and Enright explores it unflinchingly.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Difficulty coming to terms
Comment: Anne Enright has written a book that will (and has) spark debates for years to come. Admittedly, this book is not for everyone and more often than not the reader will have to re read it to fully understand what this book is about. I, for one, enjoyed this grim tale of Veronica Hegarty. The backdrop of the story is Irish and we're taken on an arduous journey of a woman trying to escape the Catholic Church. The story unfolds when her brother Liam commits suicide and Veronica is forced to bring the body from England - the scene of his death.
Veronica tells the story of the dark family secrets dating back to her Grandparents and vaulting forward to her present day in an effort to unweave this family tree. We learn of the trouble that harbors deep within her as a result of her childhood. Veronica is lost in her own world and seems to be unable to express her emotions and damages her psyche. Anne Enright has done a remarkable job outlining the troubling life of this thirty something woman who finds difficulty in gripping reality. Another book I would highly recommend is "Sirens by Tin Geo" Sirens:A Novel A great novel that came paired with "The Gathering"
Customer Rating:
Summary: Frustrating
Comment: I was very much looking forward to "The Gathering", yet I must say it is my least favourite recent Booker winner. Anne Enright certainly writes well. Her words are well chosen and the book is generally well crafted.
I often enjoy books written on families and the hidden rage and secrets that exist. This book is typical of many others thematically and since Enright is a skillful writer, it should have the basics for a good book.
Her switches back and forth in time are very sloppy. I found myself very frustrated reading this book and didn't enjoy it much at all. I think this could have been very good but ultimately fails to entertain or provide insight. I probably disliked the characters more than I should have because I began to dislike Enright's style and frustration with her translated into frustration with the characters.
The tone reminded a little bit of John Banville's "The Sea", the Booker winner of 2005. While I didn't love "The Sea", I felt it was a much tighter book. Additionally, Banville is poetic at every turn.
I can't recommend "The Gathering". The craftmanship didn't make up for the frustration I felt in reading it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Won no prizes with this reader
Comment: Happy was the day when I gave up on this book a quarter of the way through and returned it to the library. I enjoy literary fiction and looked forward to this Man Booker prize winner, based on a review in the press. The "gathering" in this Irish novel is triggered by the suicide of one in a large family of siblings. What ultimately frustrated me about the narrative was the incessantly negative voice of Veronica, the sister who tells the tale. She is a singularly joyless character, who finds little to animate her in any affirmative way. In the portion I read, neither she (nor the author) contributed any leavening, by way of humor or irony, to this relentlessly unpleasant voice, whether it spoke of current or past events. Darkness is not the problem. Some writers can make dark stories sing -- the Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald in Fall On Your Knees, for example. But I found nothing in either the prose or the story to keep me pushing forward with The Gathering. Life is too short, and there is too much excellent -- and entertaining -- writing out there to spend my time with this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A psycological masterpiece
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I loved it.
Comment: This is the kind of book that you feel you are friends with the narrator... I loved it.
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