The Gathering

I was engrossed by this beautifully written book about the way that things that happened in a previous generation can affect one’s happiness without one even knowing about them.

I totally identified with protagonist Veronica as she looks for clues as to why her brother committed suicide by imagining scenes from her parents’ past.

When I registered the subtle moment that was crucial to it all, everything fell into stark and terrible place, and it took my breath away. Both witty and sad, the book left a deep impression on me.

When Enright won the Booker for this novel she blazed onto my horizon – I was nineteen – as an Irish woman who wrote candidly about the legacies of poverty and abuse, set much of her novel in the radically unfashionable suburb of Broadstone, staged a climactic scene in the flatlands of Donabate (close to where I grew up), and then won a massive prize for doing that.

Everything Enright writes is marvelous, but The Gathering gives you a frank, familiar, post-Celtic Tiger version of Dublin that has been endlessly inspirational to my own recreations of it.

I love the… show more.