{"id":2251,"date":"2024-04-01T16:30:36","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T23:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2251"},"modified":"2024-04-01T16:30:38","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T23:30:38","slug":"bookshelf-the-gathering-anne-enright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=2251","title":{"rendered":"Bookshelf \u2013 The Gathering, Anne Enright"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some people carry so much drag and ache and dread that they cannot separate the weight from themselves. They are what they suffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fate of these tormented beings, thinks Veronica Hegarty as she laments the death of her brother, Liam, older by only eleven months and drowned by his own hand in the cold of the English Channel, is imprinted in their bones.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cHistory is biological, that\u2019s what I think,\u201d says Veronica as her family gathers in Dublin for Liam\u2019s wake. \u201cWhat is written for the future is written in the body, the rest is only spoor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Liam bore, etched into his marrow, was the scar of a terrible incident that befell him when he was nine, a moment witnessed by Veronica. Liam lives with pain, Veronica with shame. \u201cAfter a lifetime of spreading the hurt around,\u201d she thinks, \u201c(Liam) managed to blame me. And I managed to feel guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veronica feels guilt for her escape from the claustrophobic environment of a family of a dozen children, a mother vanishing into herself, and a rough-cut father. She made it to the middle class. Liam, her soulmate, didn\u2019t. He drank and practiced enough general fecklessness to earn labels like gurrier, messer, and thug from even his siblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liam\u2019s death unleashes not only Veronica\u2019s memories of what happened that fateful day in her grandmother\u2019s house, but also brings to the boil long-simmering dissatisfactions with her own \u201cnormal\u201d life \u2013 materially rich, emotionally impoverished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Gathering\u201d asks some patience of the reader. Veronica, seeking to make sense of her brother\u2019s death, hopscotches through the calendar — her grandmother\u2019s time, her own childhood, the present, when she is 39. Hard things happen, and both their overhang and portent infuse the story with a heaviness, but it is tolerable because nothing occurs in the story that couldn\u2019t occur to anyone at any time in real life. It is the heaviness of being human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enright is a masterful writer and a pleasure to read. The narration is almost elegiac, but also precise and not at all wimpy. When, for example, Veronica speaks of her jumbled sex life, Enright endows her with schoolyard language that shocks with directness. In all, \u201cThe Gathering\u201d is as complicated and mysterious as life itself, and just as rewarding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people carry so much drag and ache and dread that they cannot separate the weight from themselves. They are what they suffer. The fate of these tormented beings, thinks Veronica Hegarty as she laments the death of her brother, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[863,770,862,811,864],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-anne-enright","tag-book-review","tag-booker-prize","tag-bookshelf","tag-the-gathering"],"yoast_head":"\nBookshelf \u2013 The Gathering, Anne Enright - Tim Porter's Second Draft<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Anne Enright is a masterful writer and a pleasure to read. 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