Hmm - do I put Russo's book aside...to participate in what could be a great discussion? Can I handle both?

Yes, you should definitely put Russo aside. You have the perfect name to participate in this discussion. ;)

You started right off with something that was on my mind during my reading of this book. I didn't feel I could trust Veronica's memory. Did this really happen? Did it happen to her, or to her brother? As a member of a large family myself, I know that memory is a fragile, nebulous thing.

I almost had the sense that Veronica wanted it to have happened, because it was a rather convenient "excuse" for her own behavior, and for her brother's inability to function well as an adult. Yes, I felt her husband was remarkably tolerant of her, almost inexplicably so.

Is it possible to simultaneously love yet despise a book and alternately be disgusted and enraged yet enthralled? If so, you have my feelings about The Gathering in a nutshell.

Veronica is one of the most unreliable, unsympathetic, whiny narrators I've ever encountered. And, if she is to be believed, she is part of one of the most dysfunctional families to boot. Why her husband put up with her I shall never understand since I frequently felt the urge to grasp her by the shoulders, shake her, and tell her to stop wallowing in self-pity and get on with it. To be honest, I half hoped that she would follow Liam's example and fill her coat pockets with stones. That's how unsympathetic I found her to be, and I don't really know how much we can trust her so-called recollections, especially since she so frequently admits that she is basing her narrative on conjecture.

I can't decide whether to believe some of her conclusions. For some reason, I do believe that Liam was Nugent's victim. I am unsure as to whether Veronica was or not, although I find myself wanting to believe that she was in an effort to explain her preoccupation with sex and various men's....er....how shall I say?.....private member. Her imaginings and descriptions about this male body part occurred so often that I can't accept it as the normal thought process of an emotionally healthy individual. I can, however, understand that if she herself was a victim that it would manifest itself in her lurid thoughts about, for instance, the man she sat beside on the train, the man she attempted to evade by slipping into a church, her husband, and others.

I also find it interesting that she concludes that Ada's two children (Veronica's mother and uncle) were Nugent's victims as a way of explaining her mother's vagueness and her uncle's madness. Veronica also contends (in my understanding) that Ada was aware of what Nugent did and that, in the end, she is the one who ultimately bears the blame for what happened to Liam.

I agree with you about Veronica, ColorMeConfused (or may I call you cmc?! ), though I liked her a little more than that. What I wondered was whether she's basically having a mental breakdown, brought on by Liam's suicide, her guilty feelings about what happened to Liam (if it did...) and possibly other unexplained pressures we know nothing about. It's things like the time when she suddenly accuses her husband of being prepared to "f*** anything", completely out of the blue, and then disappears out of the house down to the pub. One would hope that that had not been her usual behaviour throughout her marriage...!

The final sentences ("I have been falling into my own life, for months. And I am about to hit it now.") give me hope that she's finally realizing the mess she's in and is going to do something about it. (She might start by talking to a therapist...)

I have to admit it's fascinating reading a book by an unreliable narrator who freely admits that what she's saying is unreliable. Makes a change from the self-deluding type (like Ishiguro's) with their buttoned-up emotions. One thing about Veronica, she's hardly buttoned-up her emotions - that's the one thing about what she says we probably can consistently believe.

I think Veronica is the only truthful character in the novel -eventually - Liam's suicide is the catalyst that she has been waiting for all her life - the fortitude to brush the family detritus (her birth family and her married family) away from who she is and MOVE ON. Who amongst us is a reliable narrator of our 'family' experiences - mother, father, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, etc etc. everything is intensely subjective and capable of making/breaking us.
I think this writer has made that very clear - it's an uncomfortable truth - adult children invent their parents.
I know I wont be able to quote Larkin's famous poem on RP (more's the pity - I hate censorship) but we all know what our Mums and Dads do to us - what has been done to them by their Mums and Dads.
If any posters have read 'The Sound and the Fury' does 'The Gathering' have any resonances for you?
We might also consider that a 'gathering' is another name for an infected boil from which the poison needs to be expressed before there is healing.

Martin, please do call me cmc or CMC if you wish, as most of my online friends do, although I will answer to almost any variation.

I've been thinking that perhaps I've been too hard on Veronica and that maybe I became so impatient with what I considered her self-indulgent self-pity that it crowded out any sympathy I might have felt for her. Perhaps I should do as you did, Martin, and read the book again.

Jankin, that's an interesting point you make about the possibility of an alternative meaning for "gathering." I hadn't considered that.

To be honest, by the time I reached the half-way point of the book, I was shaking my head and wondering why on earth it was awarded the Booker. By the end, though, I had to concede that at least it was a better choice than last year and that it was, in some respects, superior to On Chesil Beach. It has some beautiful writing, to be certain, and it's one of those books that has grown on me the more I reflect on it.

If I may ask, what is it, in your opinions, that makes this work different from the run of the mill "dysfunctional family" books? (There are a lot of them out there!)

Speaking for myself - I read TG simply because it was, unusually IMHO, readable - I promised myself that I would, in spite of all my good intentions, read a Booker book - I wouldn't put it anywhere near my top 100 reads but at a time when my own family situation was undergoing considerable upheaval it just seemed to gel with the time. As you say it is just another dysfunctional family book = but fairly well written.

Anyone else read this?

I think it is a bit different because of the ambiguity - we never really know what happened or even if it happened. Usually the reader is hit over the head with the situation at some point. Also, the rather unsympathetic characters of Liam and Veronica are unusual. It seems that in most novels, literary or not, the victim is often the most likeable character, and therein lies the horror at what has happened to them.

I agree with Siobhan - it's whether it actually happened that makes the book rather more interesting. It's also the way that the book is not just a "dysfunctional family" (btw, why is it "dysfunctional" and not "disfunctional"?) book, but more a book about one woman's reaction to a suicide - as in the end, you get the idea that the reason she went into this whole history of the family and analysis was as a result of the suicide.

Is Veronica really that unlikeable? I thought her behviour was reprehensible after the funeral and onwards, but, for some reason, I tend to feel that this was not usual. I didn't feel that she was normally not a nice person - just that she'd gone a bit off the rails as a result of the death of her brother. Am I just trying to see the best in someone who doesn't deserve it? Her husband seems a reasonably nice, patient bloke; some of her ex's seem quite human as well.

Any other comments? Anyone want to jump in with a completely different aspect?

>I know I wont be able to quote Larkin's famous poem on RP

Ok, I am not sure why you can't quote anything here, but you have me very curious. Which poem? I will be glad to link it.

Interesting discussion - I haven't read the book but am torn between being very interested (I love books with unreliable narrators) and not (another dysfunctional family book?). If nothing else I'll have to take a peek at it.

Let's give it a whirl -NO it was censored - how reprehensible of RP Managers I've had to leave a soace
I dont think I'll bother coming back to such a small minded forum that can and will censore our major poets - Pooh to you RP

Philip Larkin -

They you.... up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ...... up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself

Hee, I do remember that poem.

BTW, I haven't seen anything censored by the management since Spike left. So no reason to leave :)

I wasn't permitted to post this time until I had removed the 'offending' words

Oh good grief. I'm very sorry to hear that, how incredibly silly.

I was curious about Martin's question as to why the word 'dysfunctional' is 'dys' and not 'dis', so I looked up the definitions of each.
According to the Encarta World English Dictionary of 1999, 'dis' is a prefix from the Latin meaning 'apart', as in disconnect; 1. to undo; do the opposite, as in disapprove
2.opposite or absence of, as in discourtesy, etc.

and

'dys' is a prefix from the Greek meaning bad, impaired or abnormal, as in dyslexia or dysfunctional.

Sorry for being late here, but I didn't get a chance to finish the book till the past weekend. As usual, my understanding is broadened after reading the discussion here but I remain lukewarm about this book.

Veronica a sympathetic character? Not really. She's stuck in stanza one of the Larkin poem--oh, look what my family did to me and my brother. And that was what? I did believe Nugent abused Liam until she started on the "well, not in the front room, maybe the garage..." track. Nugent and his sister in an incestuous relationship, Ada's passiveness in the face of child sexual abuse, Ada's love/sex thing with Nugent, this whole who did what to whom began to strike me as looking for the sole pat answer to explain generations of dysfunction.

At first, I thought Veronica's fascination, and disgust, with all things sexual stemmed from her parents' incessant breeding and Veronica's expressed embarrassment about her very large family; next, I thought witnessing her brother's abuse did it; finally, I started thinking maybe whatever mental illness plagued her uncle was inherited. I do agree TG is a story about Veronica's reaction to her "closest" brother's suicide and childhood memories, especially traumatic ones, are tough to accurately recall.

Were the religious references significant? The priest/brother pretender? Nolo me tangere/Nolly Lamb? "Comfort me with apples" (the rest of which is "for I am sick of love.") from the Song of Solomon? (had to google that one.)

I just finished this book a few minutes ago.

I thought it was just okay. I enjoyed and appreciated the writing....I just didn't care for the characters, and got bogged down in the plot. Like a few others have posted, I found Veronica whiny and very self-involved. I thought it very ironic--in a sad way--that after despising her Mother for being emotionally absent, Veronica ends up doing the same thing to her own daughters during her "breakdown". I wanted to tell her to snap out of it, and to try and break this horrible cycle of dysfunctional parenting.

I also felt that Veronica was desperate to find answers as to why her family was so messed up; and that it wasn't really clear whether or not Liam was actually molested. Veronica certainly thought he was; but didn't seem to have any firm memories. I think she wanted an "easy" explanation as to why he committed suicide.

It was a thought-provoking novel, that's for sure!

Kelly