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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Simply the Worst, 24 Nov 2008
One of the pleasures of being in a book group is that you find yourself forced to read books you never would have otherwise tried, and as a result, sometimes discover a wonderful work (one such example in my case is Jose Saramago's Blindness). However, the evil twin of that pleasure is the unmitigated pain of wasting precious time slogging through something you can't stand. Unfortunately, not only does this Booker Prize-winner stand firmly in that second category, it is the champion of it: the most hated book of the 70+ I've read for my bookclub, and the least enjoyable work of fiction I've read this year (out of roughly 100 or so books).
Unlike many other haters of this tedious book, I didn't find it particularly difficult reading. The unannounced shifts back and forth in time and place didn't leave me adrift so much as amazed at their clumsiness. Then again, the book is essentially a monologue of remembrance, and human memories are messy things, so I was willing to conditionally accept that messiness as part and parcel of the protagonist. Speaking of the protagonist (middle-aged Veronica Hegerty), many haters seem to focus on her unlikability as the source of the book's problems. Personally, I don't think that a protagonist needs to be likable in any way -- just interesting. But she's not interesting in the slightest, just (like the book itself), annoyingly self-indulgent. I suppose this could be construed as a kind of commentary on her yuppiesh generation, but that seems like grasping at straws. Moreover, there are no other characters to connect with. The entire story takes place within Veronica's head, and even though it's populated with various family members who allegedly mean so much to her (in a love/hate way), the reader never gets a sense of any of them.
The plot -- such as it is -- revolves around the suicide of one of Veronica's brothers, which sends her on a trip to Brighton to bring the body back to Ireland for the funeral (she is gathering the body to bring it back to a gathering of people -- clever). About halfway into the book the "secret" of this brother's lifelong depression is revealed, and it's both jaw-droppingly cliched and wholly simplistic and reductionist. My one hope was that this "revelation" would be the spark that lit a fire under the second half of the book -- but no, it simply plods forward at the same stultifying pace. Ultimately the book has nothing to offer: it has no telling insights into memory or regret, it rehashes the same tired cliches about growing up poor and Irish, its use of the unreliable narrator is rudimentary at best, and its not even notably bleak and depressing. I guess you could make the argument that many of these flaws are actually commentary on the flawed nature of humans, but this doesn't make it worth spending your own precious time on.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don`t waste your time and money, 28 Sep 2008
This is the most tedious book I have ever read.I read it together with other members of a book club and nobody liked it. It was full of self pity and unlikeable characters. How it won the Booker Prize I don`t understand. At the book club we even joked about having a ritual burning of it as we disliked it so much.
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225 of 274 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Boring, 23 Aug 2007
Words almost fail me when describing how boring I found The Gathering.
The basic premise is that the Hegarty family, both numerous and Irish, is gathering for the funeral of one of the siblings - Liam - who it seems had a bit of a drink problem and drowned himself in the sea at Brighton. The novel is narrated by Liam's sister Veronica who was, we are told, close in age and also in affection.
The problem is that the family is intensely boring. There is nothing to make us actually care about any of them. They seem not to have any depth of personality and there is no attempt made at character development as Liam and Veronica's history is outlined. Neither do we see much in the way of story. We have to take Veronica's word for the close bond between herself and Liam - we see little more than an escapade at the bus station by way of example.
We are then asked to believe - in the novel's moment of drama - that Liam's problems arose from his abuse at the hands of Lambert Nugent, the spurned lover of his grandmother. However, the depth of Liam's problems are not properly explored, and no real attempt is made to link a change in behaviour to the event in question. Moreover, the nature of the abuse is hardly the most serious abuse known to man. Of course, this doesn't mean that it couldn't have affected Liam in a big way, but Anne Enright doesn't show us one way or another. Indeed, later on in the novel, she explains that nothing can be proven by way of cause and effect.
Then, we have Veronica's own issues. She has decided, for reasons that bored me, to call a temporary halt in conjugal relations with her husband. So what? The soul searching - navel gazing? - that comes on the back of this is the essence of tedium.
And despite not having a personality, Veronica seems terribly obsessed with herself. The count of "I" on each page is high. We have lines like, and I paraphrase, I knew immediately that it was me she had come to speak to... We have self conscious moments where Veronica has to turn her head away from whichever side of the room seemed to be looking at her most closely. Yet this is not played as neurosis - it seems to be a straight affirmation that Veronica is the star of the show. But the reason for this remains obscure.
There is some slight intrigue in the relationship between the grandmother, Ada, her husband Charlie and her spurned admirer Lambert. But this comes as too little, too late. By that point, it has all become words on a page. There is nothing to draw the reader into caring for the Hegarty family as people. Just the ever increasing wish that it would end.
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