The Gathering: A Novel
Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007:  Pretty early on inThe Gatheringyou realize that in her lingering portrait of the Hegarty clan (and this isn't  hyperbole--they are a family of 12), Irish novelist Anne Enright will wrestle with all the giant literary tropes that have  come before her. Family, of course, is the big one, but with equal intensity she explores death and dying, the sea and its  siren song, sex, shame, secrecy, unreliable memories, madness, "the drink," and--always in the shadows--England. That said,  it's not like any other novel about the Irish that I've read. The story of the Hegartys is indeed bleak, and hard, but it  surges with tenderness and eloquent thought which, in the end, are the very things that help this family (or at least her  narrator Veronica) survive. Through her eyes, and in Enright's skillful imagination, those small turning-point moments of  life that we all know in some form or another--a petty fight, a careless word, an event witnessed--come together in an  unshakeable vision of how you become the person you are.--Anne Bartholomew--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.