The Gathering

What a strange strange novel. I find it difficult to believe that this is a Booker Prize winner (I hold this prize in very high esteem, but I am afraid this time it let me down). I found the narrator's preoccupation with sex (especially her own family's) and genitals rather disturbing. Almost the entire first half of the novel involves her imagining how her grandparents met and did or didn't shag! And if that isn't enough, at one point she thinks about her dead baby brother and imagines how he is having little cherub sex in heaven - umm, icky!

Occasionally there is a glimpse at the kind of book this could have been (and I suppose why it won the booker prize), when Enright delivers the most beautiful and powerful prose. However, this is few and far between. As for the plot, well, it is nothing new. Why would a man grow up to be a damaged alcoholic? Take a guess and you will probably be right.