The Gathering by Anne Enright – A Book Review

The glaring rays of the sun are such a delight today; it’s a warm afternoon. It’s been raining unceasingly for the last two days and I can see the coconut tree in my backyard in its shadow, in its reflection in the small puddle that hasn't dried up yet and in itself of course  A small beautiful yellow butterfly with a dab of black flits playfully among the branches; now she is here, now she is not.

I follow her aimless path and I wonder what makes this beautiful being so restless, is there a purpose to her irritating journey where I lose her so frequently and then she appears teasingly from some other corner and I would have missed her if she would not have beguiled me into searching with such hunger. Even when she is long gone, she lingers in my mind and I realize it is not the restless butterfly buzzing in my head but the crazy and disturbing thoughts that Anne Enright through Veronica has drilled into me. I think I am losing it just like Veronica is!

Veronica is a mother of two girls; she is one of the twelve siblings. Twelve children and seven miscarriages; that has been the talent of her mother and father of course. 

There were girls at school whose families grew to a robust five or six. There were girls with seven or eight – which was thought a little enthusiastic – and then there were the pathetic ones like me, who had parents that were just helpless to it, and bred as naturally as they might shit.

Liam, her younger brother who she is closest to, is dead. Dead from drowning in the sea. He walked into it of his own accord. Suicide! Why? Did it happen due to an incident that happened long back at her grandmother’s house when they were innocent children; a shocking revelation to Veronica but which neither she nor Liam ever spoke about? But that was a long way into the past and Liam is in his forties when he finally decides to give up. What bearing on our everyday life does a past incident have, how difficult is it to forget this deeply rooted remembrance; does a single incident, however disgusting it might be, shape us, our decisions, our outlook towards life?

As Veronica gathers her family and journeys to bring back home what is left of Liam, his body, her thoughts about their inseparable childhood doesn't let her rest. In sporadic bursts, Ada, her grandmother, Charlie, her grandpa, the other guy Lambert Nugent and the secrets of their juxtaposed lives create a ruckus in her mind. She has turned into an insomniac, like a ghost she roams her house alone, drives aimlessly in the morning. She just can’t let go off Liam, their childhood, their growing up, their distances, their separations and it is driving her crazy.

 I am all for sadness, I say, don’t get me wrong. I am all for the ordinary life of the brain. But we fill up sometimes, like those little wooden birds that sit on a pole – we fill up with it, until donk, we tilt into the drink.

This isn't a story, it is the ramblings of Veronica, a lengthy loony conversation that she has with you where she reveals the madhouse of her mind, the uninvited disturbing thoughts that come up sporadically out of nowhere and at times you are infected and fooled into her pit of directionless nonsensical discursive. At times you can’t take anymore of her dirty and disgusting thoughts and like her husband, you want her to stop but she is in no mood to spare you and at times you grin at her silliness and absurdity. She is driving herself to madness, you think, and she IS, at the expense of her dead brother and their living thoughts and the discoveries that she makes post his death. I wouldn't be surprised if the author was on a psychedelic high or shamelessly drunk or in a disturbed state when she wrote this book. Is there a plot, there almost always is, but that is not what this book is about; its essence lies in its madness, in trying to comprehend and not be confused by what is reality and what is Veronica’s imagination.

And what amazes me as I hit the motorway is not the fact that everyone loses someone, but that everyone loves someone. It seems like a massive waste of energy……and we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love anymore. And there is no logic or use to any of this that I can see.

And I turn around again and gather the covers about me, as the thing my husband is fucking in his sleep slowly recedes. A thing that might be me. Or it might not be me. It might be Marilyn Monroe – dead or alive. It might be a slippery, plastic kind of girl, or a woman he knows from work, or it might be a child – his own daughter, why not? There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I am not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw a line.

The initial pages of the book will remind you of ‘The Sense of an Ending’ because it is failing memories that Enright plays with. For me, the initial half of the book felt a little boring to the point I wanted to give it up which I don’t generally do with books, but I realized it was a building up of what captivated and influenced me in the latter part of the book.

There she goes again, my fluttering yellow butterfly.

My Rating : * * * * * * * * * * - 7/10 

Anne Enright