The Gathering

This book has received a lot of negative ratings. I agree it is not a book for everyone's tastes. It's not an easy listen, but the narration is perfect. I loved the book. I felt like I was inside Veronica's confused and guilt-ridden head... experiencing all the twists and turns that happen when trying to make sense of things after a tragedy, on top of a lifetime of hurt. I will go back and listen again.

This book is so unrelentingly dreary that I can't find one good thing to say about it. Not one character had any appeal to me. I am so sick of reading about drunks and their devestating effects on children. I can't imagine how this book won any prize whatsoever. The only good thing I can say is that the reader successfully intoned, in a monotonic haze of despair, both the tone and content of this book. I hated it so much, it makes me mad.

This story was so depressing I could not finish listening to it. The characters are uniformly sad and grim, without a trace of wit to lighten the mood. The pacing too is agonizingly slow, focusing on minute detail to the exclusion of action. The author appears capable of something better than this book's unrelenting theme of grief and loss.

This book was beautifully written. But a real sleeper. I just kept waiting and waiting for the plot to go somewhere. But it NEVER did. Maybe someone with more of an interest in psychotherapy might relate but I found the main character very narcissistic and not even in an interesting way. I would not recommend this book to most readers.

After two hours I had to admit defeat--the story still hadn't begun to take off. The narrator within the story (Veronica?) was not one with whom I could empathize. It might eventually have gotten better, but I don't have enough years left in my life to find out.

This book is dreadful. When you're 6 hours into it and you don't care what happens to the characters, there's a problem. The narrator reads at an incredibly slow pace. I just want to get the sound of it out of my ears. This book needs to go on a list called "Waste of a Credit."

Anne Enright is a masterful, funny, nuanced, sly writer who sees what most others miss: the fine details, the incredible range of human emotion. Fabulous book to read with gorgeous language and a somewhat flawed structure. But stellar for the language alone. To listen? This recording kills the story right out of the gate. If I were the author I'd be dismayed. Terry Donnelly rings one note throughout: rage. It sounds like one long rageful rant, in fact, making it unlistenable. There's incredible tension in the book itself, but it comes not from rage but an extraordinary range of emotion. The reader missed it all. The character would have a right to be this enraged throughout, but she feels many things: from amusement and delight to sadness and grief--with humor! As it turns out, the reader missed all this leaving no room for discovery. And rendering this unlistenable. Who wants to listen to someone rage for many hours in a row? (Who wants to listen to someone rage unless it's righteously earned? And even then, for how long?) Enright didn't write an angry diatribe, though you wouldn't know it from trying to listen to this.

The book itself.

I'm sorry to be so dismissive here, but Terry Donnelly missed the point entirely and ruins access to a noteworthy story. There is nothing nuanced in her read.

Was there anyone directing the reader? Anne Enright was a radio journalist in the past. Did she hear how this was read before it was released? Did she get any say in the matter?

Family, Irish, Generations

The flow of familial ties from generation to generation - the sense of time and blood ties flowing like a river without beginning or end.

The wake - recognizing Liam's child.

Perfect title.

It appears some listeners are put off by the darkness of the book. As a survivor of family suicide I can say the book is spot on about the aftermath of suicide. It is dark, but charmingly Irish, and relieved by the dark humor so essential to surviving family tragedies. The narrator is a gifted actress and made the story authentic and more enjoyable.

This might be one of those great dark, Irish books if you are reading it, but listening to this book is torture. These are the most boring people on earth. I gave up after the first third and came to the web site for another book. The narrator should just divorce her husband and move on -- maybe get a job and a life. Initially I wanted to know what happened to Liam as a child, but then I just wanted it to end.

This is tediously written and the narrator is depressed and depressing. It seems to touch on all the stereotypes of the Irish: alcoholism, dysfunctional families, abuse. More than half way into it, I just couldn't take the narrative any more or the constant switching from present to past and the it-might-have-happened-this-way approach. Ugh!