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Laura's Reviews > The Gathering
The Gathering
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An Irish woman's brother dies. She is obsessed with sex (or, more accurately, with penises) and mumbles to herself about something (maybe death, maybe sex, maybe family -- it's awfully hard to say) for 250 pages.
While my summary of this self-indulgent mess of a book is obviously meant to be facetious, it's not far off. Enright's narrator really doesn't have anything to say, nor does Enright give us any reason that we should want to hear her say it. We're supposed to be interested in the narrator, apparently, simply because the author tells us so. But for whatever reason, she doesn't actually bother to give the reader anything to hang onto, save her admittedly impressive writing technique. Great, but who cares about her technique? A novel needs to be more than technique; technique is cheap, and actually not that difficult. The book comes across as a long writing exercise that the author couldn't or wouldn't shape into something worthwhile.
If you're looking for a work bereft of plot, characterization, or anything else that makes a novel recognizably a novel, buy this book with all due speed. If you'd rather read an actual novel, skip it, and if it's technique you want, try David Mitchell.
While my summary of this self-indulgent mess of a book is obviously meant to be facetious, it's not far off. Enright's narrator really doesn't have anything to say, nor does Enright give us any reason that we should want to hear her say it. We're supposed to be interested in the narrator, apparently, simply because the author tells us so. But for whatever reason, she doesn't actually bother to give the reader anything to hang onto, save her admittedly impressive writing technique. Great, but who cares about her technique? A novel needs to be more than technique; technique is cheap, and actually not that difficult. The book comes across as a long writing exercise that the author couldn't or wouldn't shape into something worthwhile.
If you're looking for a work bereft of plot, characterization, or anything else that makes a novel recognizably a novel, buy this book with all due speed. If you'd rather read an actual novel, skip it, and if it's technique you want, try David Mitchell.
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by
W.B.
(new)
Jul 02, 2013 01:19PM
Swag of sark! Thanks for the giggles. I appreciate your "take no prisoners" approach. I'm much more of a milquetoast. I have to confess I am a little intrigued by the idea of a novel mumbling for 250 pages. It sounds like a great premise for a Monty Python skit qua novel: everyone mumbles their lines. I would love the movie adaptation much better, I think. I visualize the movie adaptation as occurring in rooms too dark to see virtually anything. And maybe the mumblers should also be stumblers, constantly walking into one another, and stumbling into the furniture in the extremely poorly-lit interiors or landscapes. But the movie would have all that mumbling about penis "going for it." That might be a selling point.
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That's basically "Last Year at Marienbad"! Wandering through rooms, mumbling. I don't think they mumble about penises, although it's very possible that they do. I think I'd probably remember that, but who knows; I was so glassy-eyed by the end that I probably don't really remember much, except the wandering.
I read this book, I didn't like this book, but for whatever reason don't remember her penis fixation at all, yet you are one of many who commented it. I have no intention of reading book again to see what I was missing.
I'm jealous that you've managed to block any portion of this miserable novel out of your mind.
