Review: The Gathering by Anne Enright

Right off the bat, I have to say I hated this book. It was painful to have to read. But not am I anal retentive enough to have to finish everything I start, I also felt compelled to read all of it because it was chosen for one of my book clubs. I will also say that we were about evenly split on liking and loathing it. I thought it was overwrought and depressing. I didn’t like our narrator Veronica and didn’t feel that we got to know the rest of the very large Hegarty family at all. It took absolute yonks to understand Veronica’s attachment to her brother Liam (to the exclusion of the other siblings). And finally, the mix of Veronica’s legitimate childhood memories mixed poorly and uneasily with her imagined memories of her grandparents’ courtship (and sex life) and of her parents’ marriage (and sex life). I guess there really wasn’t a thing about the book that I enjoyed and while it was irresolutely dreary, I could have handled that without the stereotypical and flat characterization combined with clunky writing. I know this won the Booker Prize so perhaps I have no idea what I’m talking about but I think the judges were delusional. Nothing about this book sang.