Dear Readers,


I now consider this blog to be my Juvenelia. Have fun perusing the archives, and find me at my new haunt, here.

Monday, April 14, 2008

The Gathering

by Anne Enright, winner of the Man-Booker Prize.

I'm catching up on book reviews from the last three months, and this is the first one I feel obligated to discuss.

I can only review the first half of this book,which is about the tragic past, and also tragic present, of a large Irish-catholic family. I can only review the first half of it because I put it down about 100 pages though. It was a huge disappointment.

Don't get me wrong. I love Ireland. In fact, I lived there. I love Irish literature, poetry, and art. And I love contemporary female novelists who write about Family and Tragedy, as a rule. But this was just too much for me. Too depressing, too formally written, with a narrator I didn't much care for. I admit to some vague curiosity about what happened in the protagonist's childhood that scarred her brother Liam and made him turn to the bottle... but not enough, alas.

This reminds me of two recent reading snafus in my young life.
One was my disasterous run at The Emperor's Children. Ick. The other was my slog through the marshes of the other Man-Booker winner, The Inheritance of Loss.
Is the conclusion to be drawn that the above prize committee should check themselves before they wreck themselves? Perhaps.

But at least they're pickin wimmins! You hear that, Pulitzers?

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