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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Gathering (originale 2007; edizione 2007)di Anne Enright
Informazioni sull'operaLa veglia di Anne Enright (2007)
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. I started reading this book five years ago and must have put it down about 1/4 of the way in and forgotten about it. Accordingly, coming upon it again was an unexpected happenstance. Ms. Enright writes beautifully, with traditional Irish lyricism, in a way that out-Joyce’s James Joyce because of its more modern accessibility. The gathering that gives this novel its title is the funeral of Liam Hegarty, a troubled 30-something man who walked into the ocean with a pocket full of rocks, and the story's central focus is the nine surviving Hegarty adult children as they come together for their brother. The narrator, Liam’s Irish twin, Veronica, is tasked with collecting Liam’s body from England and returning it to Ireland, a time during which she reflects on where his life might have gone wrong, which evokes a memory of a terrible secret, something that happened when they were children and were farmed out, along with their sister Kitty to their grandmother, Ada, for a year. But in this unraveling mystery of past causes, the power of Ms. Enright's gorgeous prose saves the story's dark weight from burdening the reader. The Gathering’s detours from reality are disconcerting, making the narrator less than trustworthy, but nothing happens that could not happen, that has not happened, to somebody. Not an easy, feel-good story, but a beautifully told one in its desperate darkness. My favorite insight in this story: “[H]e was unkind to every single person who tried to love him; mostly, and especially, to every woman he ever slept with, and still, after a lifetime of spreading the hurt around, he managed to blame me. And I managed to feel guilty. Now why is that? This is what shame does. This is the anatomy and mechanism of a family – a whole fucking country – drowning in shame.” Gathering. It is what friends and family and colleagues and sometimes even strangers do when someone dies. As an aside, I just attended my very first virtual funeral (a Doom Zoom, we are calling it). In Elizabeth Enright's Gathering, what is left of a very large family gather to say goodbye to Liam: a son, a brother, an uncle, a beloved who has committed suicide by drowning off the coast of England. Separated in age by a little over a year, sister Veronica Hegerty is Liam's nearest and dearest sibling and more his twin in every sense. It is her responsibility to collect the body and hold the gathering. She tells Liam's story through a series of childhood flashbacks and present-day adult manic musings. Growing up with Liam was a mixture of deep seated secrets and innocence lost. Veronica spends her time trying to puzzle the clues and remembering the memories. Here's what we all do when someone close to us commits suicide: we sift through the ashes of a life burnt out, searching for clues to why they left us; trying to answer the questions of Is it our fault? Did we set the fire? What could we have done differently to save them? (To quote Natalie Merchant, "It was such a nightmare raving how can we save him from himself?" Are you surprised I went there? How could I not?) As for her adult issues, thirty-nine year old Veronica wrestles with problems with her marriage, confused by subliminal hang-ups about sex. She has inner demons that have haunted her since childhood. I honestly can't say how well I enjoyed The Gathering. It did leave me thinking of the characters for a long time afterwards, so there's that. It's been said that Sigmund Freud said of the Irish "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever." After reading the Gathering you can begin to understand why. The Irish seem to be haunted not only by guilt and shame, but by the ghosts of their dead relatives as well. Here's a particularly telling passage from the novel : " I know I sound bitter, and Christ I wish I wasn't such a hard bitch sometimes, but my brother blamed me for twenty years or more. He blamed me for my nice house, with the nice white paint on the walls, and the nice daughters in their bedrooms of nice lilac and nicer pink. He blamed me for my golf loving husband, though God knows it is many years since Tom had free time for a round of golf. He treated me like I was selling out on something, though on what I do not know-- because Liam did not allow dreams either, of course. My brother had strong ideas about justice, but he was unkind to every single person who tried to love him; mostly, and especially, to every woman he ever slept with, and still after a lifetime of spreading hurt around, he managed to blame me. And I managed to feel guilty. Now why is that ? This is what shame does. This is the anatomy and mechanism of a family--a whole fucking country--drowning in shame." Being of Irish decent myself I can safely say Yeah, that's the Irish for you.
At its best Enright's prose style is excitingly original, a blend of defensive social satire with extreme precision in evoking sounds, smells, and atmosphere and a great ability to make rapid and telling transitions from past to present, concrete to abstract, narrative to reflection. However, these qualities emerge for the most part in sections peripheral to the main story.... When, on the other hand, she slides into melodrama and literary formula, The Gathering does indeed sound like at least nine other writers and by no means the best. Her prose often ravishes and sometimes repels: reading her can be like staring into the lustrous surface of a lake, trying to discern the dangers lurking beneath. . . Bringing together the skills she has honed along the way, Enright carries off her illusions without props or dei ex machina, bravely engaging with the carnival horrors of everyday life. Ha come guida per lo studentePremi e riconoscimentiMenzioniElenchi di rilievo
As nine members of the Hegarty clan gather for the wake of their drowned brother Liam, his sister Veronica remembers the secret he shared with her about what happened in their grandmother's house thirty years ago, a betrayal that spans three generations. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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To explain what might have happened, Veronica spins stories about her grandparents. She does not know to what extent any of them might be true, but she's desperate to explain the complex bonds between them that might shed light on what occurred later, when she and Liam were living with them. In the meantime, her own marriage is struggling to survive, and going back home and dealing with all of her relatives again further stresses her. It's a portrait of a woman at a loss, trapped in her own ruminations, needing a path forward but (to borrow a line) borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Anyone who's wondered if we can ever really escape from ourselves and our pasts will appreciate Enright's work here. Her language is lush and evocative, and Veronica's struggle to understand her family history and her own life is rendered powerfully. That feeling of childhood memory, the way the details get harder to recall the more we try, and the challenge of trying to extract meaning from it is also captured poignantly. Veronica's heartache feels real, wanting neither to fall into the easy trap of blaming everything on family but unable to figure out how much blame to assign where.
While I appreciated aspects of Enright's craft, I did not like this book. It's often confusing to read, moving back and forth in time without clarity. When we're introduced to Veronica's imaginings about her grandparents' early lives, it's not clear until later on that these are rooted in nothing more than her own imagination. And while I'm no prude, I have never read a book so fixated on describing erections in my life and hope I never do again. While it kind of made sense, based on what's revealed over time, it was awkward and honestly unnecessary. It took me out of the book entirely. And although it's less than 300 pages long, the book honestly feels like it's been puffed out and was in real need of editing. Usually the Booker is a good list for me in terms of books I'm likely to enjoy reading, but this one just did nothing at all for me. I do not recommend it. ( )