I had forgotten how much I hate these sorts of books when I picked this up at the library. You know, the woman in the midlife crisis who is brought up short by the realities of the world sort of books. Oh, woe is me. That sort of thing.

This book was even worse than the usual offerings in this ilk, because it meandered so much and the language was so choppy that it was difficult to follow the story, or the characters, or, honestly, to feel much interest in what was going on. Someone on the front cover calls her language “oddly brittle, spiky,” but I would just call it poorly composed and wandering, personally. Trying to read this book was like trying to decipher street signs without glasses. I could get a vague idea of the shape of things, but I didn’t really know what anything meant.

Oh well, I guess you can’t love everything you read, even highly-recommended contemporary Irish fiction.

Demographics:

The Gathering, by Anne Enright. Published 2007, 261 pages. Fiction.