The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)
The Gathering (Man Booker Prize)
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 th
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Uneven,
The Booker prize is a strange beast. The books that make it to the short list are usually excellent, yet somehow the worst of those always gets chosen.
I expected to loveloveLOVE this book. I adore books about multi-generational family dysfunction, and I’m a total sucker for evocative locales. This book covers a large Irish family from the 1920s to the current day. The plot is driven by funeral arrangements for the family’s black sheep, who has committed suicide. The writing is lovely. It is almost impossible for me to dislike a book that contains so many fascinating elements. Sadly, however, “The Gathering” is that book.
This is not to say the it’s a total loss. What Enright can do, she does well. For instance, she perfectly captures the strange and malleable thing that is childhood memory. I found myself nodding along as the main character, Veronica, describes her grandparent’s house and various members of the extended family through eight-year-old eyes. Enright clearly wants to convey the uncertainty of memory and she succeeds. Veronica vividly remembers events that may or may not have occurred, or perhaps involved her siblings rather than herself. Additionally, her prose is beautiful. You’ll be struck more than once by a sentence that’s horrible, gorgeous, brilliant, and despairing all at once.
At the same time, I agree with all the criticisms levelled here. The book jumps haphazardly from the present to the past, and if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s often unclear whether it’s all a figment of Veronica’s imagination. I think Enright wanted to intensify the sense of uncertainty around the stories we tell to make sense of our family history. She uses a heavy hand, and the end result is a confused mess.
This mess is most painful when it comes to Veronica’s relationship with her husband. They are on the verge of divorce, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was wrong. Apparently her husband works a highly competitive field, and is unsatisfied. Wow, who knew THAT could happen? Or maybe her husband has cheated on her. It’s hard to tell when Veronica states that her husband stays with her because he hates her. Yes, that might seem strange to the average reader, but that’s before you learn that he, like all men, hates her because he doesn’t want to lose control during orgasm.
This leads me to another point, one I was surprised to see no mention of: the narrator deeply, profoundly despises men. It’s so pointed that I thought perhaps Enright wanted the reader to assume that Veronica was sexually abused, though it’s not explicitly described. The generalizations about men as sex starved, narcissistic monsters come early and often. I’m not sure if just the narrator is bitter, or if perhaps the author is as well.
Additionally, I have to agree that the book is often self-indulgent and overwrought. If you’re looking frequent and unflattering descriptions of genetalia, then this is the book for you. The romantic relationships generally start with people falling in love, or life-long lust, at first glance. Additionally, Veronica emphasizes over and over the haunting, stunning, heart breakingly blue eyes all the children have. Is this a serious work of literature, or a romance novel?
Even the writing, the strongest point in the book stumbles more than once. The first time Veronica describes a family member as “human meat”, I was shocked and enthralled. Unfortunately, this metaphor loses some power after half a dozen uses.
Finally, I may be jaded, but this family didn’t seem all that dysfunctional. There’s tragedy, but when you’re describing several dozen people’s lives, what are the odds that every single one is happy and normal? Isn’t that just life? Of course it’s painful for the people involved, but I’m not sure that Enright realizes that pain, though it feels special when it happens to you, is quite ordinary.
I’ll probably try another one of Enright’s books, but overall, this one was not worth the effort.
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|A bitter little pill of a book.,
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.
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|.. of relatives, reminiscences, and regrets ..,
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
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