Of loss and recovery

Ambreen Noon Kazi reviews the 2007 Man Booker Prize Winner.

The gathering
By Anne Enright
A carefully worded novel that tells a compelling story — not necessarily one that pleases —The Gathering talks of loss, grief and bereavement.

A line from the book reads: "there is always someone who has been interfered with as a child". In The Gathering Veronica Hegarty is the protagonist and the oblique reference to the "someone" abused is her brother Liam. It is Liam's suicide that frames Enright's fourth novel.

The Gathering tacks between Veronica's methodical preparations for his funeral and the months-long nervous breakdown that follows. Its first person narrative addresses the complex processes of remembering and writing.

The darkness of the book's central events and Enright's concerns to do justice to the story make the text difficult to read in places — with evocative language signalling bad things to come.

Depressed and distressed Veronica recalls and reconstructs the experiences the siblings shared in a crowd of 12 children in an effort to try once again to engage with the world.

Enright's work is clearly the product of a remarkable intelligence, combined with a gift for observation and deduction, she alludes to the truth that sometimes our great adventures are interior. A beautiful read for anyone who knows the pangs of loss and seeks the path to recovery.

Author of the week: Anne Enright

Born 11 October, 1962.

Born in Dublin, Anne Enright is a Booker Prize-winning Irish author. Having published essays, short stories, a non-fiction book and four novels, before The Gathering she had a low profile in Ireland and the UK even though her books were favourably reviewed and widely praised. Her writing explores themes such as family relationships, and ove, Ireland's difficult past and its modern zeitgeist.

Enright's first novel, The Wig My Father Wore' was published in 1995. The book explores themes such as love, motherhood and Roman Catholicism. Her next novel What Are You Like?, was about twin girls called Marie and Maria who are separated at birth and raised apart from each other in Dublin and London.

It looks at tensions and ironies between family members. It was short-listed in the novel category of the Whitbread Awards.

She has also written the novel The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002) — a fictionalised account of the life of Eliza Lynch, an Irish woman who was the consort of Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López and became Paraguay's most powerful woman in the 19th century. Enright's fourth novel The Gathering was published in 2007.

Enright won the Davy Byrne's Irish Writing Award for 2004. She also won the Royal Society of Authors Encore Prize. On October 16, 2007 Enright was awarded the Man Booker Prize, which included a cash award of £50,000 (Dh370,024).

- The writer is an avid reader and collector of books in Dubai