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Flowers
Chocolates & Gifts
Vases & Plants
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 enlarge | Author: Anne Enright
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy Used: $1.99
You Save: $12.01 (86%)
New (86) Used (149) Collectible (3) from $1.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  134 reviews
Sales Rank: 2986
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0802170390
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780802170392
ASIN: 0802170390
Publication Date: September 10, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Good condition
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| Customer Reviews:
 We see our own November 24, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read this book slowly. I had to. If I had not, the pain would have been insurmountable. Even so, the pain was there, a dull throb.
If you have ever grieved (which we nearly all have or will at some point in our lives), then this book will speak to you. Directly, honestly. If you have ever grieved a family member, one you remembered as a child, then this book will speak to you. If your family has secrets, then this book will speak to you. If you have loved and lost, then this book will speak to you.
Basically, I can't imagine an adult who would read this book and not find some connection within. Can't imagine who would not experience a moment of "ah ha" as she read.
On the surface, it's a book about grief (a sister for her brother), but beneath there is a lifetime of grieving. Veronica has witnessed much and even that which she has not witnessed, she feels she knows. As she moves through the layers of her life, she shows us how her family fell apart, came back together, fell apart, came back together. For what else is there in a family but the pushing away and the pulling back close?
And in Veronica's large family, we are able to see our own.
Maybe I'm wrong and this book will make no sense to you. Even so, the writing is a glory to behold as is the story it uncovers.
 Simply the Worst November 24, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
One of the pleasures of being in a book group is that you find yourself forced to read books you never would have otherwise tried, and as a result, sometimes discover a wonderful work (one such example in my case is Jose Saramago's Blindness). However, the evil twin of that pleasure is the unmitigated pain of wasting precious time slogging through something you can't stand. Unfortunately, not only does this Booker Prize-winner stand firmly in that second category, it is the champion of it: the most hated book of the 70+ I've read for my bookclub, and the least enjoyable work of fiction I've read this year (out of roughly 100 or so books).
Unlike many other haters of this tedious book, I didn't find it particularly difficult reading. The unannounced shifts back and forth in time and place didn't leave me adrift so much as amazed at their clumsiness. Then again, the book is essentially a monologue of remembrance, and human memories are messy things, so I was willing to conditionally accept that messiness as part and parcel of the protagonist. Speaking of the protagonist (middle-aged Veronica Hegerty), many haters seem to focus on her unlikability as the source of the book's problems. Personally, I don't think that a protagonist needs to be likable in any way -- just interesting. But she's not interesting in the slightest, just (like the book itself), annoyingly self-indulgent. I suppose this could be construed as a kind of commentary on her yuppiesh generation, but that seems like grasping at straws. Moreover, there are no other characters to connect with. The entire story takes place within Veronica's head, and even though it's populated with various family members who allegedly mean so much to her (in a love/hate way), the reader never gets a sense of any of them.
The plot -- such as it is -- revolves around the suicide of one of Veronica's brothers, which sends her on a trip to Brighton to bring the body back to Ireland for the funeral (she is gathering the body to bring it back to a gathering of people -- clever). About halfway into the book the "secret" of this brother's lifelong depression is revealed, and it's both jaw-droppingly cliched and wholly simplistic and reductionist. My one hope was that this "revelation" would be the spark that lit a fire under the second half of the book -- but no, it simply plods forward at the same stultifying pace. Ultimately the book has nothing to offer: it has no telling insights into memory or regret, it rehashes the same tired cliches about growing up poor and Irish, its use of the unreliable narrator is rudimentary at best, and its not even notably bleak and depressing. I guess you could make the argument that many of these flaws are actually commentary on the flawed nature of humans, but this doesn't make it worth spending your own precious time on.
 The gathering of dispersive thoughts November 14, 2008
`The Gathering' happens because Liam Hegarty dies suddenly. Through the words of his beloved sister Veronica who collects his body and organizes the funeral, we learn the tale of the Hegarty family and a terrible secret from the distant past which she shares with Liam. Collecting her thoughts, feelings and memories hopping through three generations I suppose reflects an intrinsic quality, a certain originality in this novel, but it still did not satisfy me.
The display of thoughts and situations that flow and scatter chasing each other in almost every page is often too disjointed for my liking. This probably conveys Veronica's pain and state of mind in an authentic way -facing the irreversible past and struggling with grief, seeking redemption- but I found that past and present interchanging swiftly, with juxtapositional vague memories and some mental images, rendered the whole story a bit knotty. Also, I really did not think that any of the characters were suitably portrayed. There are no standouts one way or the other, which could have added depth to the novel; perhaps this was the author's intention (i.e. a portrait of a very ordinary, numerous, imperfect family) but because most characters seem to just linger in the background, without much purpose, the result was that I soon found the whole thing quite dispersive, bordering boring.
I have finished the book because I always do, but I was expecting more by a Man Booker Prize Winner.
Sorry, sometimes that's the way it goes.
Not too thrilled November 10, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had high hopes for this book given that it had won a prize, but was sadly disappointed. I was actually sorry I had spent the time reading it.
Disappointing November 10, 2008
I really expected (and wanted) to like this book. I was patient and kept reading, hoping to get to the part of the book where it took off and became interesting. But I honestly never ended up connecting with or caring that much about the characters. For me, this book was a disappointment.
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