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| The Gathering | 
 enlarge | Author: Anne Enright
Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks,Hong Kong
Category: Book
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £10.71
You Save: £9.28 (46%)
New (11) from £10.71
Avg. Customer Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 86594
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Items: 7
Pages: 7
Discs: 6
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.7 x 4.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 9626349174
EAN: 9789626349175
ASIN: 9626349174
Publication Date: March 14, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
 A study of a woman going mad September 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This reminds me somewhat of Iain Banks' 'The Steep Road to Garbadale', the slow unravelling of a family secret, the disaster that ensues, and the grand finale where the whole family witnesses the undoing of a character. However, Enright's female character seems to fall slowly to pieces in a rather Woolfesque way. A few beautifully turned phrases I had to copy and keep to reread. Insightful.
 A short-story dragged beyond its natural length September 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Booker Prize is known as much for its occasional mis-fires as it is for recognising and rewarding brilliance. One thing's for sure; this 2007 winner is unlikely to trouble future compilers of 'Best of Booker' lists. In some ways it is surprising that it won simply because it is so close in its central themes to the winner two years before, John Banville's The Sea, which also deals with dysfunctional relationships, childhood memories, and the guilt and grief felt after a family death. But while Banville's book is a must-read masterpiece and worthy prize-winner; The Gathering is not...
This reader's frustration with The Gathering was amplified by the fact that it starts wonderfully and raises expectations to a level that it ultimately disappoints. There's no doubting Enright's 'technical' writing skills, and she has a particular way with metaphor, and a dark humour runs through her work. The opening chapter, only two pages long, is brilliant, setting the scene, establishing intrigue and a sense of dread - what memories, however uncertain, will the narrator invoke?
The novel reaches its high-point in Chapter 2 as the narrator goes to break the news of her brother's death to her sainted mother, and this big, brawling Irish family's history begins to spill out and show its cracks. But from here, as Enright has her narrator imagining - in endless detail - the lives and thoughts of her grandparents' generation and the hazy memories from her own childhood, in order to bring sense to her own situation now, the book begins to suffer seriously from being over-written and a complete loss of narrative momentum. At only 250 pages, the book feels twice as long, and comes across as a good short-story that's been stretched un-naturally to fit a novel's form.
While the book is essentially an exploration of uncertainty and memory, and how family history defines the self, I feel that Enright uses this to get away with some lazy thinking. For example, we are asked to accept that the brother's suicide was an absolutely inevitable outcome stemming from the abuse he suffered as a child. Really? An exploration of why some children 'survive' abuse and others don't, might have been more helpful - what else was in Liam's pysche that drove him into a life as an alcoholic drifter? Was that as responsible for his death as what happened to him as child? Enright's abstract and experimental style seems to imply that this doesn't matter, it's not really what the book is 'about' anyway, which is true enough but seems like a cop-out to me.
While none of Enright's characters, including the narrator, are exactly sympathetic, the men are particularly unpleasant and to my mind close to an easy stereotype. Enright is too artful to write that she thinks men are essentially rather thick and emotionally one-dimensional beings, led not by their brains but by what's in their trousers, but that's clearly her view based on the characterisations here. Sex is a heavy underlying theme, in Enright's view an elemental force that drives us to do things we would rather not do, and at no point is it suggested that to be human is actually to have the intelligence and will-power to overcome animal instincts. This leaves the book with a rather depressing, fatalistic taint, and the ending, where a glimmer of hope is offered to narrator Veronica, seems a slightly artificial 'Hollywood-ending' and at odds with everything that's gone before.
Oh well, not a disaster then, because of the quality of the writing, but certainly not a high-point in the Booker Prize's chequered history.
 The Last Order it is not! August 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having read some of the `superlatives' for Anne Enright's `The Gathering' on the paperback edition, I found this novel both anger and dark, which may have been a rationale for its selection; however, having no insight in to what the Man-Booker judges were thinking this is indeed rank speculation. Moreover, it would appear that the central character Veronica was on a rant for two hundred sixty-one pages about the disappointment(s) associated with every aspect of her miserable life. Furthermore, the supporting cast in this story appear rather one-dimensional, which made `The Gathering' overly tedious, additionally efforts to give the narrative a bit of context by moving back in forth historical only served to frustrate. As a polemic on life in the modern era it was fundamentally flawed, namely it was one hundred and sixty-one pages to long, although as a short story I suspect it would have had similar problems.
Incredibly boring July 22, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I don't read a lot of books but this really grabbed me when I read the back cover in the book store. I started to read it but it didn't take me very long to decide that it was a very boring book. The text didn't seem to flow at all. I kept checking that this book had received the Booker Prize!! I was incredibly disappointed and will not be looking out for any new titles from this author.
 An Engaging Narrator Takes You to Liam's Wake While Shrouding the Past in Mystery June 11, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
When a book has won a prestigious prize like the Man Booker, readers feel a double challenge: Appreciate the book for what it is and try to figure out what attracted the award panel's approval. I think the former was easier to do than the latter in this case.
Ultimately, The Gathering's subject is the difficulty with trying to pin down the truth of anything, especially things that happened long ago for which there is little or no contemporary evidence. If you've never thought much about that issue, you'll enjoy the subtle philosophical bent of the novel.
That subject is explored in the context of a sister contemplating her brother's death. Veronica Hegerty is a very vivid and appealing character: Much of the book's charm comes from seeing her family through her eyes and memories. In the process, she reveals the kind of "within the family" opinions that all family members express in whispers with one another. Beneath her grief, Veronica also feels a need to share a secret with us . . . but she feels at a loss for how to do so. Her rambling reflections gradually spiral closer and closer to that secret until you realize its full shocking lesson: People may not be who they seem to be, and you need to be careful even where there seems to be no risk.
There's an unedited quality at times in the book that captures what will remind you of the sorts of soliloquies that we've all conducted in our minds. That exposition method is very effective for making Veronica's feelings come across more strongly.
Why did the book win the award? I'm not really sure. I found that the secret wasn't so very interesting as to make the philosophical question and the writing style worth the effort. The book felt like a well decorated cake where the appearance of the icing was a lot better than the taste and freshness of the cake.
But anyone who enjoys good writing will find this book rewarding. We can all learn from a stylist like Anne Enright.
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