I just finished reading this year’s booker prize winner novel. The Gathering by Anne Enright.
It is an Irish novel. An Irish Family of nine children gathers around for the funeral of their brother. The circumstances of brother’s death bring back childhood memories of the heroine.
Anne’s novel is very hard to read. The story revolves around her childhood memories in her grand mother’s house. She recollects her experience with three generation of her relatives. Though the story is about the death of her brother whom she so much loved the sentimentality of the grief is not shown. So the book does not move me as a death should be. Her characters are confusing and disjointed.
Yet the book has interested me as heroine struggles to come to terms with the death. More so how he died- drowning himself with stones in his pockets. The grief has shown her how pathetic her love life is. How she fights to ward off her insomnia? - makes it an interesting read.
For some, this kind of narrative will always be uncomfortable. Too many feelings and not enough actions.
“Every reader reads himself. The writer’s works is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, with out his book; he would perhaps never has seen himself.”
(From the maxims of Marcel Proust compiled by Justin O’Brien and quoted by Michel Dirda in Readings)
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Thanks for your comment. I certainly agree with your views on the positive side of the novel. i definitely shall read what you suggest.
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To mohtamil
When I read The Gathering first time, I got an impression that how the family life of humans are being fragmented. Everyone is like an iland. But when I read it again,I find that how the persons related by blood tend to remain attached with each other. The positive side of the story.
Though to my mind The Gathering is not as entertaining as the other short-listed books like Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones,( I am reading now a day), and Animal's People by Indra Sinha, it is a good read.
Naval Langa
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Every reader reads himself. The writer’s works is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, with out his book; he would perhaps never has seen himself
I cant agree more.
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