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[[Category:21st-century Irish novels]]
[[Category:21st-century Irish novels]]
[[Category:Novels set in Dublin (city)]]
[[Category:Novels set in Dublin (city)]]
[[Category:Suicide in fiction]]





Revision as of 10:59, 31 August 2016

The Gathering
First edition
AuthorAnne Enright
Cover artistAndrew Richards
LanguageEnglish
PublisherJonathan Cape
Publication date
3 May 2007
Publication placeIreland
Media typePrint (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages272 pp (hardcover)
ISBN0-224-07873-9
OCLC77540525
LC ClassPR6055.N73 G38 2007

The Gathering (2007) is the fourth novel by Irish author Anne Enright. It won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, eventually chosen unanimously by the jury after having largely been considered an outsider to win the prize.[1][2] Although it received mostly favorable reviews on its first publication, sales of the book had been modest before it was named as one of the six books on the Man Booker Prize shortlist in September 2007. After winning the prize, sales more than doubled compared to sales before the announcement.[3][4][5] Enright described the book as "...the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie."[6]

The novel traces the narrator's inner journey, setting out to derive meaning from past and present events, and takes place in Ireland and England. Its title refers to the funeral of Liam Hegarty, an alcoholic who committed suicide in the sea at Brighton. His mother and eight of the nine surviving Hegarty children gather in Dublin 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.[6][7][8]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Enright takes Booker Prize for Fiction. Ireland On-Line. (16 October 2007). Retrieved on 17 October 2007.
  2. ^ "The Gathering wins the Man Booker Prize 2007". The Man Booker Prize. 2007-10-16. Retrieved 2007-10-17.
  3. ^ Rickett, Joel (2007-10-20), "The bookseller", The Guardian, retrieved 2007-10-20
  4. ^ Lyall, Sarah (2007-10-17), "Anne Enright Wins Man Booker Prize", New York Times, retrieved 2007-10-17
  5. ^ Purcell, Bernard; Battersby, Eileen (2007-10-17), "Irish novelist beats the odds to win Booker Prize for 'The Gathering'", The Irish Times, retrieved 2007-10-17
  6. ^ a b Lawless, Jill (2007-10-16), "Anne Enright Wins Booker Prize", Washington Post, retrieved 2007-10-17
  7. ^ "Low-profile literary purist gatecrashes Booker party", Irish Independent, 2007-10-17, retrieved 2007-10-17
  8. ^ Schillinger, Liesl (2007-09-30), "Liam's Wake", New York Times, retrieved 2007-10-17
Awards
Preceded by Man Booker Prize recipient
2007
Succeeded by