Anne Enright

As nine members of the Hegarty clan gather for the wake of their drowned brother Liam, his sister Veronica remembers the secret he shared with her about what happened in their grandmother's house thirty years ago, a betrayal that spans three generations.

The Gathering

Gavin

Remember trudging through it but don't remember anything else about it.

Irene Alegre

I think I just didn't get this book. I finished it and still don't get it. I don't understand the point of this novel, where it goes and what it is trying to say, denounce or portray. AND half of the things that happen didn't even really happen. Confusing and pointless read for me.

Jenni Pertuset

The Goodreads description calls Anne Enright a "dazzling" writer, but the book doesn't dazzle (that's not a bad thing, generally speaking). It does pull some neat perspective shifts, and the story is engaging enough, with a few surprises, but there's a plodding quality to it. I think it's largely intentional, since the protagonist seems to be living in a daze of grief. It's hard to keep some of the characters straight (perhaps not a surprise with a cast of 12 siblings plus parents, grandparents, etc.) It is about memories and secrets, and though there is an event central to the story's family (which is not the gathering of the title) the real story is how one woman comes untethered from her daily life.

Melody Izard

Veronica and the remainder of her large family, are about to gather at the family home for the wake of her brother. As she prepares for this reunion she tries to decide which of her memories are real and which are imagined. There is something that Veronica remembers that may or may not have happened in her grandmother’s house. She skitters around it – teases us with what she may or may not have seen, then deliberately goes off to something that she may, or may not remember; something that may or may not be related, something that may or may not be significant, until she decides – enough is enough, then she hits us with what she thinks occurred – then goes right back to her possible memories with the fumes of alcohol stinking up the clarity.
 
This is a book of pieced together memories, or an attempt at memories. A central question in the book is what events in your life make you who you are? Reading the book is like walking through a murky, foggy alley, feeling your way around; touching some things, smelling something slightly familiar, but still not quite knowing where you are or where you are going. At one point the narrator, Veronica, tells us how a part of her remains at the point where she is remembering: 

“And a part of me goes with her when the car drives away. Another part of me is still, these years later, walking along the road where the stranger set us down.”

All through the story Veronica fiddles with her memories until she gets a version she can live with – a version that gives her comfort or explains things for her. But her biggest struggle is to decide what things in her past or in her brother’s past, or in her mother’s past, caused happiness or unhappiness. It’s hard enough knowing if things happening in the present make you happy; if things in the present are good or bad things; if things in the present should be stopped or continued – much less whether things that happened in the past, things you remember or think you remember made you happy or if you simply tolerated it. 
 
The book also explores the way that you can completely forget some aspects of your life, your 21st birthday, how you met a certain person, what color your first boyfriend’s eyes were, but some memories just will not go away – they haunt you, they are constantly with you.

Trevor Berrett

This was the only book on the Booker short list that I did not want to read. When it won, I was disappointed because I thought it looked too much like Banville's The Sea, and I did not enjoy my time with that book. However, I thought I needed to give The Gathering a shot. No, I was not pleasantly surprised. 
Enright's The Gathering may have a some inciteful, well written sentences, and it may be well structured both in sequence and theme, but for what purpose? I did not feel that the structure was unique and, frankly, I'm getting tired of all of these books that are praised because of how many different ways the author can write a depressing sentence (Enright usually generates hers by showing the human being and its body at its basest). Those poetic depictions lose their impact (and really make me question the skill of the author--does she not know how to write another type of sentence?) when they are repeated line after line, page after page. There was no balance.
I know that Enright was not attempting to balance this book. She admits that anyone not wanting to feel depressed should not read it. But just because she executed her intent does not make me appreciate it. I don't shy away from depressing novels, but I at least hope feel somewhat what the narrator is feeling--but in this case I did not care at all about the narrator. Her depression did not affect me, at least, not frequently enough.
Though they are similar as both deal with present grief and a tragic past, this Booker is worse that Banville's The Sea. At least The Sea was written in beautiful prose. It flowed smoothly. Enright's is downright base and choppy. The only poetry is in how basely she describes sex and death with her disconnected, stiff prose. And even that runs dry after a few chapters.
The Booker judges say that they did not think this book would win when they first read it but that it is better with subsequent reads. Well, they had to read it more than once. I'm not willing to give it another try, and I would advise others to forgo it altogether.

Deborah Baker

I.m. ruzz

I picked this up on the strength of a man booker award and for the second straight booker book i've been disappointed. I didn't develop any feeling for the main character at any point and i found her wandering semi-lucid patches of writing off putting. But more than that, I just didn't connect with the story being told. 

it took me almost three weeks to fight my way through this small book. Booker or no, few books are worth that kinda mental outlay--most spent avoiding reading it--and this one certainly wasn't.

Yasemin

Lucy Mills-Taylor

Andréa Mellalieu

heleen de boever

"The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him although that certainly helped it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. His sister Veronica was there then, as she is now: keeping the dead man company, just for another little while. The Gathering is a family epic, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright's unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman showing how memories warp and family secrets fester. This is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars. The Gathering sends fresh blood through the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. As in all Anne Enright's work, fiction and non-fiction, this is a book of daring, wit and insight: her distinctive intelligence twisting the world a fraction, and giving it back to us in a new and unforgettable light."

The Gathering

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