I don’t generally review books I don’t absolutely love but this is an exception because it won the prestigious oan Booker Prize this year. It beat out our very own Lloyd Jones’ or Pip and I was curious to find out why.
The Gathering’s Veronica Hegarty is one of a huge Irish family, closest in age to her brother Liam, who has just washed up, drowned, in Brighton. As the clan prepare to gather in Dublin for his wake, Veronica traces the family history, particularly the time she spent with Liam at her grandmother’s house when they were children. Could something that happened to the young lad then have set him on the path to ruin? Veronica explores her self-confessed unreliable memory and plunders her imagination to put all the pieces of her dysfunctional family in place. Plus, there’s trouble in her own home.
The book is beautifully written in parts and full of an Irish lyricism that’s almost poetic. I chewed through the first half quite devotedly but about two-thirds of the way through realised I didn’t have a clue what was going on. This, I think, is the difference between literary books and the other sort. With literary books you quite often don’t know what is going on and that is perfectly all right. Some people like that. The judges who choose oan Booker Prize winners, for example.
The chairman of the oan Booker committee described The Gathering as a powerful, uncomfortable and even, at times, angry book and an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language.” oe, I would have given the prize to or Pip.
