''The Gathering'' is a 2007 novel by

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

writer

Anne Enright Anne Teresa Enright (born 11 October 1962) is an Irish writer. She has published seven novels, many short stories and a non-fiction work called ''Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood'', about the birth of her two children. Her writing expl ...

. It won the 2007 Booker Prize. Although it received mostly favourable reviews on its first publication, sales of ''The Gathering'' had been modest before it was named as one of the six books on the Booker Prize shortlist in September 2007. After winning the prize, sales more than doubled compared to sales before the announcement. Enright described the book as "...the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie." The novel traces the narrator's inner journey, setting out to derive meaning from past and present events, and takes place in

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

and

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Its title refers to the funeral of Liam Hegarty, an alcoholic who took his own life in the sea at Brighton. His mother and eight of the nine surviving Hegarty children gather in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

for his wake. The novel's narrator is 39-year-old Veronica, the sibling who was closest to Liam. She looks through her family's troubled history to try to make sense of his death. She thinks that the reason for his alcoholism lies in something that happened to him in his childhood when he stayed in his grandmother's house, and uncovers uncomfortable truths about her family.

References

External links

Excerpt of ''The Gathering'' at ''The New York Times''

''The Gathering'' wins the Man Booker Prize 2007

''Times Literary Supplement'' review of ''The Gathering''
2007 Irish novels Fiction set in 1998 Booker Prize-winning works Jonathan Cape books Novels by Anne Enright Novels set in Dublin (city) Fiction about suicide {{2000s-novel-stub