There's such a level of skill and artistry at work in Anne Enright's new novel "The Gathering" (Grove Atlantic) that at times it can take your breath away. The latest - and the finest - of her four novels to date, it confirms her reputation as one of the most accomplished Irish writers of her generation.
Short-listed for this year's Booker Prize (which will be announced on October 16) Enright's latest novel is a luminous meditation on love and family connectedness, and it seems all but certain to win this year's Booker award, and the $100,000 that goes with it.
"The Gathering" introduces us to 39-year-old Veronica Hegarty, a wife and mother whose life takes a dramatic turn when her ne'er do well brother Liam fills his pockets with stones and takes a walk into the sea at Brighton beach. From there on Enright's story unfolds in language that's so vivid and transformative it keeps you from becoming mired in the unremitting sorrowfulness of her tale.
Enright, a native and resident of Dublin, agrees that the book is often unflinchingly austere. In a recent interview with the Irish Voice she said, "It's not saccharine, it's not sentimental. The character Veronica isn't very sentimental either.
"In terms of the book itself I do like to think of it at as the full Irish - the full breakfast - you want the sausages, the black pudding, the white pudding, it's all there. It wasn't in any way autobiographical, but I've worked on it so long that feels like it's become autobiographical. I've been so weathered into this life that Veronica was living."
Praised by fellow Irish novelist Colm Toibin for a prose style that's "as sharp and brilliant as Joan Didion's," Enright's latest has nonetheless divided the critics who have hailed its brilliance or lamented its unremittingly dark subject matter and treatment.
Enright believes that some of their objections are a result of her fanatical interest in style.
"People who don't want to be looking at the sentences, people who just want the prose to be transparent feel - and they're right to feel - that there is something narcissistic about style," she says.
"And so they feel that my approach is cold. But then other people who like prose don't mind in the least. I think that there's an acknowledgement that I'm interested in the way sentences go."
Other recurring questions that interviewers - men in particular - often ask her set her off. "I'm often asked where did I get my irony? I think they're usually expecting some sort of cosmopolitan European answer but actually I got it from the women I grew up with," Enright maintains.
"Women who had tough enough lives and who were black enough in their response to it. I don't have a working class background but I do think of working class Dublin women in particular, because their sense of humor is hard, they've seen people die, they've seen hard things happen to people and they're still sort of laughing."
The bleakness, the savage humor and inconsolable longing at the heart of "The Gathering" certainly places her outside the mainstream of contemporary Irish fiction and she's aware of it.
"It's funny, Irish women at the moment are writing fantastic books but they're all very cheerful, very mass market paperbacks, and they do very well and they're very up - but I do wonder whether Irish women are obliged to be friendly - and that they just can't do an unfriendly thing in a book," Enright says.
"I suppose it does take a bit of nerve to step out of that line of what Irish women are supposed to be like, which is endlessly generous and friendly and intelligent and fun and lovely and not cross at all."
As for the Booker nomination, and the tempting $100,000 check that goes to the winner, Enright pleads that as a wife, mother and celebrated novelist she hasn't had time to take it in.
"I haven't had time to think about it," she says. "Recently I've been preoccupied sending my children back to school. When I looked at my computer recently I was amazed to see that I've received 400 emails from different people congratulating me on the nomination.
"But type and wife is still my life. It's only when I come here now I say oh, right, that, yeah. And then I catch myself having a little fantasy about it. All writers fantasize about the Booker. But this time I actually am going to the ball."
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