You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Scan barcode
A review by traceculture
The Gathering by Anne Enright
5.0
This is another cracker of a novel by Anne Enright. Having just read 'The Forgotten Waltz' I am fast falling in love with this woman’s heart and mind. Her story-telling is enthralling and her prose addictive. The horrors and delights of family life are in sharp focus as we join the surviving members of the Hegarty family, in Dublin for their brothers wake. With Veronica, we journey into the family’s troubled past to help make sense of his death, after which “nothing settles, not even the dust”. Because Veronica is the one who loved him the most, it’s her job to travel to the UK to collect her brothers body “or view it, or say hello to it, or goodbye, or whatever you do to a body you once loved”.
Enright writes from a place of deep observation. Every character, family member and location described in minute detail. One night she looks at her husbands body “Tom is sad in his sleep. His hands are gathered under his chin, his legs are impossibly long and large, they do not look bent so much as broken at the knee. The hollow under his ribcage slopes to a little low, pot-belly and the cushion of his scrotum rests in the V of his thighs. He is very pale”. This is the kind of writing that can elevate even the most dour of subjects.
Veronica travels back in time to her grandparents house, Ada & Charlie, in Broadstone, where she, Liam and younger sister Kitty were sent to live, while their Mother got over another miscarriage (she had seven of them). She pictures her brother in all sorts of places, communicates with him pre and post-death, speculating about why it was he, who wandered off the path. Something terrible happened to Liam, he is the lovable tragedy and Veronica his only saviour.
She alienates herself from her husband and daughters, taking to night-driving in order to grieve in the most honest of ways. Everything is laid bare, no element of the family’s dysfunction is overlooked. And as they arrive home in their turn, the dynamics shift in pursuit of the truth.
This is a well-told story about pleasure and pain, shock and despair, resentment and the lack of forgiveness, but with an incomparable, intelligent wit. It’s almost as if she wrote the whole thing in one sitting, that the memories and hidden truths came spilling out in the precise order and language. She’s a brilliant writer and this is a brilliant book.
Highly recommended.
Enright writes from a place of deep observation. Every character, family member and location described in minute detail. One night she looks at her husbands body “Tom is sad in his sleep. His hands are gathered under his chin, his legs are impossibly long and large, they do not look bent so much as broken at the knee. The hollow under his ribcage slopes to a little low, pot-belly and the cushion of his scrotum rests in the V of his thighs. He is very pale”. This is the kind of writing that can elevate even the most dour of subjects.
Veronica travels back in time to her grandparents house, Ada & Charlie, in Broadstone, where she, Liam and younger sister Kitty were sent to live, while their Mother got over another miscarriage (she had seven of them). She pictures her brother in all sorts of places, communicates with him pre and post-death, speculating about why it was he, who wandered off the path. Something terrible happened to Liam, he is the lovable tragedy and Veronica his only saviour.
She alienates herself from her husband and daughters, taking to night-driving in order to grieve in the most honest of ways. Everything is laid bare, no element of the family’s dysfunction is overlooked. And as they arrive home in their turn, the dynamics shift in pursuit of the truth.
This is a well-told story about pleasure and pain, shock and despair, resentment and the lack of forgiveness, but with an incomparable, intelligent wit. It’s almost as if she wrote the whole thing in one sitting, that the memories and hidden truths came spilling out in the precise order and language. She’s a brilliant writer and this is a brilliant book.
Highly recommended.