The Gathering By Anne Enright

Mid Term Break – Seamus Heaney I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying— He had always taken funerals in his stride— And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'. Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

Above: Anne Enright Clockwise from top left: Jonathan Swift, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Colm Toibin, Seamus Heaney, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw.

Questions for discussion “Sex, for Enright, is a kind of gleefully appalling slapstick that dogs humanity and leaves it betrayed” – A.L.Kennedy Which elements of Enright’s (or Veronica’s) fascination with sex did you notice, and what function do you feel it serves? “The Hegartys are nominally Catholic, but no more than that.” - Adam Mars Jones Do you agree with this? With her explorations of Catholic guilt, alcoholism and child abuse, is Enright using The Gathering to explore some of Catholicism’s uglier stereotypes? “The Gathering is aware of its heritage, of the books that have gone before it. It makes use of familiar [Irish] signals and motifs. But there are new things too.” – Eleanor Birne In what ways does Enright’s novel embody and advance the Irish literary tradition? “It is family, of course, that is at the heart of the novel. What it is, what it means, what it does to you.” – Eleanor Birne What conclusions does Enright seem to draw about family? Is this grief or guilt Veronica is experiencing?

The Golden Question: why did it win? Man Booker Prize winners 2000 to present Booker Shortlist 2007 Ian McEwan – On Chesil Beach Anne Enright – The Gathering Nicola Barker – Darkmans Mohsin Hamid – The Reluctant Fundamentalist Lloyd Jones – Mr Pip Indra Sinha – Animal’s People

That "the historical sections are refracted through various kinds of linguistic lenses", Enright explains, is " a reflection of the fact that you cannot write about Ireland in the 1950s in the same tone of voice even as you write about Ireland in the 1970s, or Ireland now. It actually requires a whole different language and sensibility, of flavour, tone and smell.“ - From an interview with Anne Enright, The Independent.