The Gathering - Anne Enright's fourth novel, and her best - is aware of its heritage, of the books that have gone before it. It makes use of familiar signals and motifs. It is centred on a wake for a man who has died early: an alcoholic who was betrayed as a child, part of a large, chaotic family. So far so Irish. But there are new things too. There is nothing clichéd about the language (Enright treasures words; she polishes them, puts them on display). The narrator is someone new too; part of the new Ireland. She is Veronica, the dead Liam's (slightly) younger sister, who lives a comfortable middle-class existence, and is trying to work out where she fits in with all this - with their combined past, and Liam's death.

LRB 18 October 2007 | PDF Download