A magpie's ancient arms coming through the mess of feathers stubby and light and clean. I have no sons myself, so when I pass any small skull or skeleton I hesitate and think of him, how he admired their intricacies. My brother Liam loved birds and, like all boys, he loved the bones of dead animals. I think you might call it a crime of the flesh, but the flesh is long fallen away and I am not sure what hurt may linger in the bones. I don't even know what name to put on it.

I feel it roaring inside me - this thing that may not have taken place. I need to bear witness to an uncertain event. I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother's house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen. 'I suppose I might admit to an interest, for the last few books, in blood, which is to say in family, biological connection the way family begins in the body,' she said in an interview last year. She also published one book of nonfiction, Making Babies. The panel described the novel as 'powerful, uncomfortable and even at times, angry,' but 'very readable and satisfying.'Įnright is the author of three previous novels, The Wig My Father Wore, What Are You Like? and The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch. Some bookstores even have shelves devoted exclusively to 'tragic family books.' And it's this familiar terrain that Irish writer Anne Enright heads for in The Gathering - a tightly wound epic tale that the Washington Post describes as a story 'about marriage, sex, death, anger, memory, blame.'Įnright's 'unflinching look' at that territory caught the attention of the judges for the 2007 Man Booker Prize, who awarded The Gathering with Britain's highest literary honor.

Each week, we present leading authors of fiction and nonfiction as they read from and discuss their work.Įver since the first novel was written, fiction has visited its form on the dysfunctional family.

The gathering enright novel