They try so hard to be inventive and literary that the final result is unintentionally funny. The easiest way to avoid this is to make it gross or mundane, throw in a mention of death, and add some non-sequiturs. Students do a funny thing when writing about sex: They want to include it in their stories, but they don’t want it to sound like a Penthouse letter. I wrote, when reviewing The Narrow Road to the Deep North, that bad sex scenes remind me of my days helping fellow students polish their papers. As in all Enright’s work, her distinctive intelligence twists the world a fraction, and gives it back to us in a new unforgettable light. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations, she shows how memories warp and secrets fester. His sister, Veronica, collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him-something that happened in their grandmother’s house in the winter of 1968. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, drowned in the sea. The book jacket makes it sound more interesting: It’s a hybrid of Gilead and Written on the Body with a curious fixation on genitalia. The Green Road is excellent, but The Gathering is overwrought and pretentious.
I’d like to state up front and unequivocally: Anne Enright is a brilliant writer.
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