The Gathering by Anne Enright
20.03.08
Last year's shock Booker winner is one of the crossest novels committed to the page. It fairly bubbles with bitterness and hatred, repression and frustration, like tomato soup left too long on the hob.
But though it may be written in blood, it's got a big beating heart: an Oirish saga of blue-eyed alkies and soft-cheeked mammys, with poor Veronica juggling them all, plus two girls she doesn't wholly love and a husband selfish enough to want to sleep with her from time to time.
Every page contains a lovely flash of insight, a glint amidst the bile. .
Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk
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. "The Gathering" 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.
