The Gathering

Anne Enright

ISBN 10: 0224078739 / ISBN 13: 9780224078733

Published by Jonathan Cape, 2007

About this Item

First edition, second printing as indicated by the print number line on the copyright page. Signed by the author on title page. Book and dust jacket in Near Fine condition. Book has clean black boards with silver gilt lettering to spine, a tight, solid binding and clean, unmarked pages. Light bumping to corners at top edge, but no scuffing, and slight age toning to page edges at top of half of book. One light corner crease to page 17/18. Otherwise in fine shape. Dust jacket is clean and bright with slight bumping wear to top edge at corners, but no tears or ink chipping, also has a corner crease to bottom rear flap, else fine. Sticker affixed to cover reads "The Man BOOKER PRIZE 2007 Shortlisted". Jacket not price clipped and in protective mylar cover. See photos.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1596132627927

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Gathering
• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0224078739
• ISBN 13: 9780224078733
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

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. His sister Veronica was there then, as she is now: keeping the dead man company, just for another little while.
The Gathering is a family epic, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright's unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations - starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman - showing how memories warp and family secrets fester. This 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.

Review

Amazon Significant Seven, November 2007: Pretty early on in The Gathering you 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