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What Members Thought
Another Booker Prize winner that is so besotted with its ambiguity and ephemeral nature that it is entirely forgettable and endlessly frustrating. Please, no more showing off how one can see without seeing, live without living, or know without knowing. Tell a story! Don't give me a magic show.
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Enright is brilliant. She tells the story in the voice of an angry, bitter woman capable of the darkest humor and the most unreliable of narrations. Veronica's responsible for identifying the corpse and bringing back from Brighton the remains of her drowned brother. She's also footing the bill for the funeral and coffin; that's how close she was to Liam. She believes his problems started the year they and their younger sister Kitty (there were 12 Hegarty children if you count Stevie, "the little
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I have a rule that once I start reading a book, I MUST finish it. This is the FIRST time that I've ever broken that rule. This book made me feel frustrated, bored, and anxious. I just couldn't torture myself any longer. Here's an excerpt to help you understand: "Nugent feels it stir in the deep root of his penis; the future, or the beginning of the future." Are you kidding me? This crap won The Man Booker Prize??? This award along with some of these five stars makes me question my intelligence a
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A long, chillling journey through the fog of introspective depression following the death of a sibling with whom one is especially close and with whom there is some lingering sense of responsibility for the paths taken by not only the sibling and oneself but by all members of a sprawling Irish family with plenty of dark Irish history behind them. But it's also a universal tale of family of any nationality, any religion -- the known and unknown -- the open and direct influence alongside the hidde
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Fascinating story of a family with a narrator so unreliable that it gives the reader endless ways of viewing a woman who is writing about the death of her brother and the life of the family she grew up in.
I found myself wrapped up completely in the consciousness of a woman during the few days surrounding the funeral of a brother who committed suicide. Any author who can do that gets my admiration.
Trying to make something out of Veronica's life is something else. Most of the time Veronica seems to be surrounded by guilt, anger, resentment, and remorse. Sex seems to be more an act of violation rather than a celebration of love most of the time. Her family seems to consist of an unpleasant group of ...more
Trying to make something out of Veronica's life is something else. Most of the time Veronica seems to be surrounded by guilt, anger, resentment, and remorse. Sex seems to be more an act of violation rather than a celebration of love most of the time. Her family seems to consist of an unpleasant group of ...more
It seemed to me that Enright was more interested in shock value than in literary values. Perhaps she has/had "issues" to work through, I don't know. I found this to be a singularly unengaging book with unlikable characters, including the protagonist. Strangely unsatisfying.
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This is a novel of family, all of the bad and the good, and of trying to unravel the knots of memory and perception to find a kind of truth. Anne Enright's use of language is exquisite; she puts words together in ways that few contemporary writers can match.
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Although occasionally difficult to follow, the language of this novel is beautiful and rewarding. The story is dark and disturbing, revealed as the narrator, Veronica, peels back layers of repressed memories.
Jan 28, 2008
Jayne
marked it as to-read
Jun 14, 2009
Isabel
added it
Oct 19, 2009
Paula
marked it as to-read
May 29, 2012
Jenny (Reading Envy)
marked it as to-read
Jan 13, 2024
Aileen
marked it as to-read
