The Gathering

 Where to start with this book. I think first off, a note on the writing style, which I found to be very confusing. The dreamy, stream of consciousness, never knowing if this memory is real or invented, whose POV it is, etc was a lot to get used to. I confess that I started listening to it rather than reading it and had to give up based on how the narrator read it. In fact, I had to give myself a week or two away from it to forget her voice. However, having now finished it, I understand why she read it the way she did. I still don't like it but I get it. Veronica is barely hanging on and the veering between anger, confusion, apathy, and sadness all make sense. 

How does one write a book about csa? It feels impossible. It feels impossible that as a society we allow such a thing to happen and even more so, to be normalized to such a degree. I think, in that vein, Enright was downright brilliant. She wrote a book that is dark, unflinching, bleak as hell, that implicates all adults. An achievement. 

I don't find Veronica to be particularly likeable but think that is besides the point. She too has had her life destroyed in a way by what happened to her brother, what happened to her mother, what happened to her grandmother, her uncle, so many others that even though she is “successful” she has inherited so much trauma and guilt that is has built up to the fever pitch where we find her once Liam has died. Does this mean she acts selfishly? Absolutely. I have real worry about how her own girls will carry forth that trauma as well. Does it make sense that at the end of the book she has run away and is daydreaming about leaving it all behind? Of course. Is that a fair or good move? No. 

This book made me confront the ghosts in my family, how my family relates to one another, and in a deeper sense, how I relate to children. I think there is something about the way she describes how she feels toward Rowan that is so salient. It's uncomfortable to read. But in a way, I think often we adults relate that way to children. We want them to love us unconditionally, to reflect the best of us, to fix and change patterns, to entertain us, to do “right” by us, to act on a way that reflects well on is, etc and so forth. So much heaped on them.