The Gathering by Anne Enright

The Gathering won the Man Booker Prize in 2007. It is a powerful book about loss and family. I hadn't read anything by Anne Enright previously but kept hearing good things about her work. Her most recent work, The Forgotten Waltz has also received good reviews.

The Gathering is mostly told in the first person, in the voice of 39 year old Veronica, as she attempts to come to terms with the death of her brother Liam. The title refers to the coming together of the remaining Hegarty family for Liam's wake. Veronica is one of nine surviving siblings.

Some of the themes covered are heavy but very well handled. Enright explores the impact of childhood sexual abuse and poverty at the individual, family and community level. She also explores intergenerational issues in a family, how an earlier generation's struggle with poverty and social restraints, can impact the current generation.  I also enjoyed Enright's exploration of the role of memory in our relationships and identity.

Even though the Hegarty family is extraordinary in many respects, not least for the large family size, I found I could relate to Veronica and some of her struggles. Enright poignantly captures the very essence of family; the mixed feelings that go with dealing with family members as one ages; the piecing together of what certain events mean and the harbouring of past hurts.

As with so many of the modern Irish writers, Enright writes like a dream. There is a sophisticated literary feel to the writing but it is also earthy and real. She evokes the faded atmosphere of the family home, right down to the sounds and smells, beautifully. There is also a real physicality to her descriptions that increases the power of her prose. She recreates the memories of childhood convincingly, complete with strong impressions and ambiguity.

This is perhaps the best book I have read in a long time about the drama and difficulties of being part of a family; the threads that unite and divide, and trying to outrun the past and forge one's own identity. The novel does end hopefully, and from beginning to end is just beautifully done. I highly recommend it.

The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry

The first novel I read by Irish author Sebastian Barry was The Secret Scripture which turned out to be one of my top two favourite reads of last year.  Barry is simply a beautiful writer.  Not in that overdone, overly clever way that I sometimes find with contemporary literature, just original, flowing prose, from the first page to the last.

This is an odd title for a book, no?  Well it actually fits perfectly, because Eneas McNulty spends his whole life hiding from his countrymen, as a wanderer. 

Eneas McNulty is born at the turn of the twentieth century in Sligo in western Ireland.  A series of choices in Eneas young life, from going away to fight in the first world war on the side of England (because he is fascinated by France apparently) to taking a job with the Royal Irish Constabulary, finds Eneas an outcast from his much loved home.  He is at odds with his childhood friends who become Irish freedom fighters and declare that if he sets foot in Ireland again, they will kill him. 

I loved the history lesson in this novel and I equally loved that Barry manages to compress a life into 300 pages.  Not a word or page is wasted.  Barry does not take sides in his narrative about the Irish history, but focuses on the effect of the conflicts on individuals on both sides.  The symbol of clothes is used to great effect in the novel, (note the old blue suit depicted on the cover) in a time when much is left unsaid, the changing clothes of the various characters come to symbolise how they see themselves or at least want to see themselves.

The tone of the novel is quiet and lonely.  Indeed I have not read a better evocation of loneliness, as Eneas goes from continent to continent, and makes two surreptitious trips back to Ireland, trying to eke out an existence for himself.  Barry gives us a portrait of a guileless, honest man, caught up in events he did not foresee.  It is also a scary portrait into the passing of time in all of our lives, at least it connected with me in that way.  The jumping of the years and decades is completely seamless, and there is something very confronting I think, when a character ages swiftly and convincinly, before the reader's very eyes, so to speak.

There are similarities between the The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and The Secret Scripture, indeed the lives of Eneas McNulty, and Roseanne (the main character in The Secret Scripture) intersect in both novels.
They are lonely, marginalised people, but for different reasons.  Reading about the same characters in two different books is quite fascinating as the points of view are explored so differently.

Of the two, The Secret Scripture for me is the stronger of the novels, mostly I think because it is a more dramatic story, and the character of Roseanne is more involving than Eneas, but that speaks to who they are as well.  Roseanne is passionate and a real fighter, who is locked away from the world, whereas Eneas is a  lost soul, adrift in the world.  He is more remote.  But from first to last he stays true to his own goodness, and demonstrates he is not at all stupid, just a moral man, barred from his home.

I admire The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty because it is truly haunting, and the ending, which is very dramatic by the way, is consistent and satisfying.  In both cases the joy of the novels is Barry's writing.  When I read his prose it comes to mind that not just anyone can write well, it is a craft and his craft is honed to heavenly perfection. I am not kidding, read him and see.  I would highly recommend Sebastian Barry to anyone.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Dracula, written by Irish author Bram Stoker, was first published in 1897.  This is the novel that I believe we have to thank or curse for the original inspiration behind the modern wave of vampire fiction.

I really enjoyed this novel.  It loses some momentum about two thirds of the way through and becomes a bit tedious and repetitive but overall it is a well spun tale of good versus evil.

Basically the story is about how a band of friends have to defeat the evil  Count Dracula to save the soul of a woman they all in different ways love. 

There is some wonderful imagery in the novel especially at the beginning when solicitor Jonathan Harker is on his way to first meet the mysterious Count Dracula at his remote castle in the creepy Carpathian mountains of Transylvania.

The story is told from multiple perspectives entirely through the writings (letters and journal entries) of the main characters.  I think this type of narrative device can be difficult to pull off but Stoker combines the different perspectives seamlessly and the narrative continues to flow.  The action moves from the Transylvania mountains to Whitby in Yorkshire to London and then back to Transylvania as Jonathan Harker ably assisted by vampire expert Van Helsing and other friends chase count Dracula to ground.  And as we all know these vampires are well and truly difficult to kill:

The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once.  He is only stronger; and being stronger have only more power to work evil.  p. 223 (Mina Harker's journal)

I can imagine this novel would have been seen as quite shocking and ground breaking at the time.  Now it seems quite restrained.  It does seem to take an interminable number of pages (at least half the book) before the characters are prepared to openly acknowledge to each other that they might in fact be dealing with the supernatural.

Dracula has everything you would hope for in a book about the Un-Dead.  Dracula himself is mercurial and strangely arresting.  He is also ably assisted in his evil making by a team of voluptuous and beguiling female vampires.  Dracula and his vamps can take multiple forms, from wolves to bats to tiny specks of dust in the moonlight.  I now know everything I could ever want to know about vampires and how to protect myself from them.

I suspect that some devotees of the modern Vampire stories might be a little disappointed with the original.  And perhaps I am also voicing my own disappointment here when I say there is a very patronising tone to the treatment of the female characters.  Not the female vampires for they have real flair and are truly fabulous.  The fallen women always seem to have more fun don't they?   It is more the damsels in distress approach to Lucy and Mina.  Chivalry is certainly not dead in this book, and actually becomes one of the major themes of the story.  It grated on me a tad. But I suspect Stoker is trying to say something about the role of women and how female sexuality was viewed in Victorian society.  It is just a bit frustrating, but on reflection interesting on a social commentary level.  If one wants to explore the social commentary aspects of a vampire novel that is.

Dracula takes some getting through but I do recommend it because while entertaining in its own right, it also provides some interesting context and insight into readers' seemingly endless fascination with Gothic themes and the supernatural.  I will give Professor Van Helsing the last word:

Do you not think that there are things which you can not understand, and yet which are: that some people see things that others can not?......Ah it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.  p. 182

"The Master" by Colm Toibin

When I finished this book I actually hugged it to myself.  It is an absolute marvel.

The Master is a novel based on the life of writer Henry James.  It depicts James in his mid and late fifties reflecting back on important events, people and losses of his life.  The portrait that Toibin builds up of James is astoundingly complex, clear and nuanced.  I loved this book.

We get to know James as a very solitary man.  A man of enormous intelligence who at once craves, seeks and guards his isolation and yet at times does seem to regret some of the decisions he has made, over the years, in order to maintain it.

Colm Toibin explores this isolation in all of its complexity.  James is portrayed as a watcher, an observer of life rather than a participant.  For me much of the sadness of his character is tied in with this.  It seems that James often sees the people who inhabit his worlds through a lens that is always on the lookout for possible story lines for his writing.  To me it seems that Toibin is suggesting that James's alertness and astute observation is some sort of defense or protection against any sort of self disclosure or intimacy.  The pain of this is achingly real at times.  Occasionally James will contemplate lowering his guard with someone, or is brought to the brink of making real contact, and yet does not take that leap into abandonment or hope or whatever that thing is when we allow someone to get close.  Several times while reading the novel I had to put the book down momentarily to manage my own response to the anguish that just flies of the page.

The impact of the deaths of James's family and friends on his life feature in the novel.  The way Toibin portrays the effect of death and its sequelae is truly beautiful.  There is a scene where James has to dispose of the clothes of a deceased loved one.  I have not read a passage in any book that better evokes the sense of unreality and desolation that follows a death.

World events and other literary characters give a wonderful context to this story.  These include the American Civil War and literary figures such as Oscar Wilde, Thackeray, George Eliot, Constance Fenimore Woolson and many more.  Toibin captures what I imagine would be the spirit of the times.  The differences in outlook between the new world of the United States and the more controlled environs of Britain and Europe, where Henry James made his various homes.  The cities of London, Venice and Rome in the closing decades of the 19th century come alive in this novel.

Toibin has created a seamless story where we go back and forth from James's present to related incidents from his past.  There is not a wasted word and the pace of the narrative is swift.  So much so that I found I read the last two thirds of the novel in a single afternoon sitting.

Toibin does it all.  I can't think of a book I have read this year that has involved a more complete portrait of a character.  We experience the very heart of Henry James complete with foibles and contradictions and amazing kindness at times.  There is drama and poignancy in relation to opportunities lost, and at other times Toibin's observations are deliciously sharp as with this little gem that took place at a dinner party:

The Baroness, in finishing, looked at Henry as though daring him to contradict her.  Clearly, he had displeased her, and she seemed uncertain whether she had made herself disagreeable enough.  He sat with her as she made up her mind that she had not.   p.281

And the best news is that while the writing is beautiful, it is not at all difficult to decipher, unlike the work of James himself.  And while I have said there are poignant and sad elements to the story, do not be put off by that because it is not at all dark or depressing.  "The Master"  is above all incredibly moving and illuminating.  I can not recommend it highly enough.

Sebastian Barry "The Secret Scripture"

This is a beautiful story. Much has been written about it in other reviews and all extremely complimentary. I couldn't agree more with this.

For me the tale of Roseanne is reminiscent of other heroines like Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Anna in Anna Karenina. The male authors in each of these sensitively convey stories of female tragedy, that occur against a back drop of prejudice and social constraint.

Sebastian Barry has such a lyrical and enticing writing style. There is no sentimentality in the telling of Roseanne's story and perhaps because of this it is all the more moving. I also think that some of the power of the narrative occurs because of what is left out. The story is comprised of a series of exquisitely told anecdotes that are enough for us to see who this woman is.

I enjoyed how Roseanne's story provokes the reader to consider the role memory plays in our lives and in our perception of reality. It is not so much Roseanne's courage, although her courage is enormous, that stands out, but her dignity and ability to keep finding ways to engage with life. I feel like the story challenges us to be able to sit with the unknown sometimes and not have to keep pushing and asking questions.

I rarely feel the urge, or need, to reread a book, even one I have enjoyed greatly. But I know I will be dipping back into The Secret Scripture to savour again Sebastian Barry's beautiful writing and explore some more the many rich themes of the novel.