Anne Enright Irish Author wins man booker prize

Irish author Anne Enright has been honoured with this year's Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in literature. This year's Man Booker Prize for fiction has been won by the Irish writer Anne Enright for her novel The Gathering.
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The announcement means the 45-year-old Dublin woman becomes the second Irish writer in three years to win the £50,000 (€70,000) award.
Minister for Arts, Tourism & Sport, Seamus Brennan said Ireland could be truly proud of her success against such a prestigious and internationally recognised short list of other competing writers.
The Director of the Arts Council, Mary Cloake, said the win raised the awareness of the wealth of literary talent that continued to emerge in Ireland.
Anne Enright looked genuinely surprised as she got up to receive her prize at a ceremony in London's Guildhall last night.
She had not been the bookies' favourite to win but the judges described her novel about three generations of an Irish family as a powerful, uncomfortable and at times angry book.
'The Gathering' is Anne Enright's fourth novel. She published her first book in 1995.
Anne Enright's podcasts about her preparations for the Man Booker awards ceremony.

Amazon Book review on the gathering
Summary: The Gathering is a portrait of a lost woman coming to grips with her past, her present and her future.
Comment: This is a complicated book, one that requires more than one reading with which to fully come to grips. There's a lot going on here, about family, about the ties that bind, about the fact we can never escape the past. Everyone will not like this book, it's too grim and rambling and unfocussed for that, but I did. The story, which is set in Dublin, revolves around Veronica Hegarty, a 30-something wife and mother, who has escaped the clutches of her huge Irish Catholic family She has eight siblings and suffers hardships when her brother, Liam, kills himself. Closest to him in age, Veronica is the one who must pick up the pieces and bring back his body from England, where he drowned himself off Brighton Beach.

The first-person narrative is told in a stream-of-consciousness manner from Veronica's perspective. She flits backwards and forwards in time, exploring her family's dark history. She goes as far back as her grandparent's generation as she tries to unravel the story. During the course of the book, which spans Liam's death through to his funeral, Veronica traces the history of the family. But through this we glimpse Veronica's obsessions and see how her personality has been slightly damaged by her rough-and-tumble crowded childhood. Her pain and her anguish is never expressed to the outside world (she cannot even communicate with her husband), but is buried deep inside where it finds expression in Veronica's self-loathing. If nothing else, The Gathering is a portrait of a lost woman coming to grips with her past, her present and her future. Also, if you missed reading Tino Georgiou's masterpiece--The Fates, go and read it. While I'm near the end, I'm reading it at a rapid pace because it's so addictive. There is something about his books that bring you in and get you hooked. and I'm loving this one.

Editorial Reviews:
Anne Enright is a dazzling writer of international stature and one of Ireland’s most singular voices. Now she delivers The Gathering, a moving, evocative portrait of a large Irish family and a shot of fresh blood into the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, drowned in the sea. His sister, Veronica, collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him—something that happened in their grandmother’s house in the winter of 1968. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations her distinctive intelligence twists the world a fraction and gives it back to us in a new and unforgettable light. The Gathering is a daring, witty, and insightful family epic, clarified through Anne Enright’s unblinking eye. It is a novel about love and disappointment, about how memories warp and secrets fester, and how fate is written in the body, not in the stars.

She joins previous Irish Booker winners John Banville who won Man Booker prize for The Sea, two years ago, Roddy Doyle Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha in 1993 and Iris Murdoch The Sea, The Sea in 1978.
As well as the prize money, a Booker win means a huge increase in sales and worldwide recognition for an author.

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Anne Enright Irish Author wins man booker prize