Gathering

The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. This is a novel about how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars.

The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. His sister, Veronica was there then, as she is now: keeping the dead man company, just for another little while. The "Gathering" is a family epic, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright's unblinking eye. It is also a sexual history: tracing the line of hurt and redemption through three generations - starting with the grandmother, Ada Merriman - showing how memories warp and family secrets fester. This is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars. The "Gathering" sends fresh blood through the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. As in all Anne Enright's work, fiction and non-fiction, this is a book of daring, wit and insight: her distinctive intelligence twisting the world a fraction, and giving it back to us in a new and unforgettable light.

"Anne Enright's style is as sharp and brilliant as Joan Didion's; the scope of her understanding is a wide as Alice Munro's; her sympathy for her characters is as tender and subtle as Alice McDermott's; her vision of Ireland is as brave and original as Edna O'Brien's. The Gathering is her best book."

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has published one collection of stories, The Portable Virgin, which won the Rooney Prize, and three novels, The Wig My Father Wore, What Are You Like? - shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and winner of the Encore Award - and The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch. Her first work of non-fiction, Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, was published in 2004.

Winner of Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2007 and Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award 2008. Shortlisted for RTE Radio 1's The Tubridy Show Listeners' Choice Award 2008 and Independent Booksellers' Book of the Year Award: Adults' Book of the Year 2008 and International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2009.

A remarkable new novel from one of Ireland's most important and innovative writers.