On the subject of childbirth, which she likens to “shitting,” Enright throws in some extra oddity to her description of a short gap between siblings: As is, it merely elicits a WTF followed by an I don’t get it. This is a unique way to describe that weak-kneed feeling, but you know Enright had to throw in the diarrhoea because if she only compared grief to sex, we’d all be saying: What? or Such brave writing to risk a misunderstanding like that! and these reactions would be even more distracting. It is a confusing feeling-somewhere between diarrhoea and sex-this grief that is almost genital.

There is a terrible heat, a looseness in my innards that makes me want to dig my fists between my thighs. 😛īut before we get to the lit sex, there’s lit grief: Though Enright’s voice is beautiful, it’s hard enough to stay focused through jumps across time and subject matter without the lit-sex intrusions. Any time I started to sink into the story, BAM! I’m only including a brief highlight reel below, because if I filled this post with penile descriptions, it might get censored.

Lit sex has always made me giggle and in The Gathering, where so much anatomy is described at random intervals, it was a distraction. 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.

The gathering enright