The Gathering: a bitter little pill of a book
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Anne Enright
Award-winning The Gathering is a bitter little pill of a book. Just like its main character, Anne Enright’s latest novel resists empathy and identification seeming to force the reader outside the text – even so one is compelled to read to the astonishing end.
The plot itself is knotty since Enright’s novel is at the same time a family saga and a psychological portrait of a woman in trouble. The main character’s first-person narrative jumps around over four generations: the eighth of the twelve Hegarty children, Veronica travels to England to collect her older brother Liam’s body. Liam, the family black sheep, has committed suicide walking into the sea with his pockets full of stones. The rest of the family gather in Dublin for his funeral. Nonetheless what is being gathered together is not just Veronica’s clan (unpleasant people doing unpleasant things: “we do not always like the people we love – we do not always have that choice.”) but a chaotic hotchpotch of memories which belong to the whole family history.
There are many family secrets revealed along the way while Veronica tries to work out the past, including one that may explain why some of the characters do what they do. Yet, as she admits in the first sentence of the book, nothing is sure since memory is never completely reliable: “I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother’s house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen.” Veronica is thus something of an unreliable narrator.
From reinventing a love triangle two generations ago to flipping through the album of her own childhood and then back to the present, Veronica’s narration progresses disjointedly as if she was getting things off her chest in a stream of consciousness response to bereavement. She shares her life as it happens: fleeting images, playing out each line of thought to the end only to begin again and letting her mind wander through each alternative scenario. Thus the story is sometimes difficult to follow and not terribly forgiving of lapsed attention as it abruptly switches among locales, generations, and characters. But the beauty of Enright’s prose is that you don’t need to fully absorb the plot in order to undertake the journey. You find yourself stepping outside the story simply to admire the language – blunt, witty, powerful writing which gets under the skin and makes you likely to forgive Enright’s novel its sharp edges and elbows.
What The Gathering is not, is the kind of book that would appeal to anyone wanting instant gratification and those looking for a straightforward story should probably keep looking. But the characters that Enright has managed to create resonate long after the book has been closed – those Hegartys symbolic of every large family: the siblings the parents favoured, those they didn’t, the messers, the drunks, the most successful, the brightest. The Gathering really got me hooked. Kudos to Anne Enright on her well-deserved Booker prize.
Gomorrah, the movie
It’s hard to stop yourself from begging for mercy, as if it were your head that Uncle Franco holds the gun against. Forget the glamourous Hollywood Mafia. No charming Godfather, no splattering shoot-outs – Matteo Garrone Gomorrah is no big hit.
This is Naples, the capital of bloody Campania, beating heart of “The System”, as they call it. While the Sicilian Mafia draws the most media attention, the Napolitan mob known as Camorra holds out noiselessly performing in the wings.
Based on the acclaimed reportage by the young Roberto Saviano (also one of the film’s many screenwriters) on Naples mob-ruled underworld and set around the dismal projects of Scampia and Secondigliano, the multi-story movie takes a vivid picture of the lives of some topical characters in five simultaneously told disparate episodes. The camera focuses on the grimy underbelly of a suburb and on its population made up of illegal immigrants and poor children for whom organised crime represents the only way out of poverty.
Looking at those 13-year-old teenage soldiers shooting themselves and their respective mothers it is hard to remember that they don’t know what they are doing and that they don’t mean to hurt. It is the law of the jungle: nowhere is safe, nobody is spared and nobody is innocent. Camorra is just a war like any other and it is impossible to choose the lesser among the evils.
I hasten to add that the Italian sin city is no sweetie for happy ending lovers. Violence is definitive and the protagonists are prisoners beyond redemption whose alienating lives just go on monotonously among crimes, garbage, cement and dead bodies – decapitated, strangled, drowned dead bodies. The moral of the sermon is absent – but the viscera of organized crime is bare for all to see.
The film that won the grand Prix award at the recent Cannes Film Festival and has been picked up as Italy’s candidate for next year’s foreign film Oscar will be out in London next week. .For those who are ready to stomach the truth about Naples’ daily hell, Garrone’s masterpiece should be at the top of their to-see list.
153 killed in Spanish jet crash
Madrid – More than 150 people died yesterday in Spanish jet crash. The Spanair aircraft en route to Canary Islands crashed moments after it took off from Barajas airport burning into flames. The investigation reported of fire in plane’s left engine, but claims emerged that the jet had reported technical hitches earlier and was on a second attempt to take off.
Pakistan: Musharraf quits as president
Islamabad – The increasing domestic and international pressure won. Pervez Musharraff resigned, just a couple of hours before parliament was meeting to start the prosecution process.
He inspected today his last guard of honour, saying he put Pakistan first “as always”.
A long list of charges against Musharraf had been compiled by a coalition committee last week. It included corruption, violating the constitution, econimic mismanagement.
The leader served for nine years as one of the most important USA allies and received from them billions in military aid.
Who will succeed Mr Musharraff?
RA Tracey Emin at the Summer Exhibition 2008. Sex and The Art
The Royal Academy of London is currently hosting the Summer Exhibition – W1 Piccadilly Circus until August 17, £3.00 – £7.00.
The idea of a “democratic” display is impressive. Completely unknown artists are here brought together with the finest existing ones. Their works are hung by eye and not according to any didactic principal. No matter if you like them, go see for yourself. Walking around from a room to another you get more and more aware of the fact that it is unlike anything anywhere else you have looked at.
So, back to me. The first thing you run into is a space devoted to the recently died U.S.-born artist Ron Kitaj and to his pop art images. Then, a huge area full of brightly coloured paintings – nice. But nothing to do with what you are going to see.
A sign warns you that you are entering the room VIII: “There are works which are shocking”. Do you expect outrage? You won’t be disappointed. It is the gallery curated by Tracey Emin, the new recruit to the ranks of the RA. Well, if there is always a work or a gallery engaging everybody’s attention, Emin has got the privilege.
The space she creates is upsetting. It is designed to shock, even more than if she had created the works herself. I heard of her when she came to Italy to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. Everybody was talking about the subject matter of her pieces as well as about her extreme presence.
Among the works selected here by Ms Emin are those of Mat Collishaw, Elke Krystufek and Sigalit Landau. Also, she includes her personal work and introduces the newcomers Rachel Kneebone, whose porcelain figurines have nothing to do with sex but are perhaps one of the most appealing items exhibited.
The automaton that features a life-sized zebra copulating with a woman presented by Collishaw, Emin’s former boyfriend, astonishes less than usual. Its impact on one’s senses softens at the sight of Elke Krystufek’s pictures representing a menstruating woman who fits fingers into herself and shows her blood to the audience.
A monitor on the wall intercepts everybody’s eyes. It shows a video of a naked woman on a seashore doing Hula Hoop with a ring of barbed wire. Extreme, hypnotic, marvellous. As a work by herself, Emin, depicting a female nude whose reclined legs allow access to the artist’s controversial arena. Sex and The Art.
Tracey Emin thinks different – fact. She sexes up the exibition. Is she blaspheme? Yes she is – and I am convinced that this is what an institution like the Royal Academy needs. Absolutely.
The theme of this year, the verb, is “man made”. Ms Emin refuses to go normal on us. The hard-core experience she inflicts to the spectators is nothing but human. Thanks Tracey. To remind us how weak the flesh is.
Harrow Road, London. Drug affair’s wrong tip-off
Harrow Road – A woman was threatened with a gun by a policeman while she was buying stuff just in front of her home.
It happened at the “Prince of Wales” junction, at the corner of Harrow Road with Fernhead Road. A police squad raided into the Costcutter shop around 9 pm looking for a drug dealer who was supposed to hang around there. One of them pulled out his gun and aimed it at the woman’s head, yelling: “Get out of here!”
Unfortunately, it was a wrong tip-off. Judy D, 40, ex criminal, is well-known in this area. She lives opposite the shop, leads a peaceful life and works for a Charity organization. A Russian drug-addicted prostitute whose name is yet unknown told the police that Judy used to sell drug nearby.
“She is the drug dealer,” reported the frightened woman “and these prostitutes are becoming a great problem for the whole neighbourhood. The police know her, but they do not catch her. They thought it was me because is easier, you know? Because I have been a criminal.”
The residential area is known for its anti-social behaviours. Drug affaires are normal here. Police are still enquiring.
Oh Milan…
Random sensations. They crowd round one’s head and do not look out for time. The traffic jam is longer than ever, and me late as usual. I light myself a cigarette, the fourth today. It is just seven o’clock, and Camels price increased by 20 pence three weeks ago.
My hands are perspiring. Opening the window would mean letting the damned smog of Milan invading the interior and getting into my lungs, and my lungs are tired. As I am.
The woman at the traffic lights leading the same old life will ask me for the same old change, capable – that’s what she says – of feeding her children for the next two months. But I am ready today, as the man at the tollgate gave me the change in nine easy instalments. Marvellous. I will give her everything, if she keeps quite.
She is used to fall silent after saying something terrible concerning me and my coming years. That is generally the instant I surrender to my enemy, pull down the window and offer her one euro on the spur of the moment. She is beautiful, and always pregnant.
Her look incites me, really. She nails me to the seat of the car as a culprit to his gibbet. I guess I feel guilty, even if it goes on a generic feeling I can not focus with precision. Every time she looks into my eyes I am sure she is just touching my existence with the tip of her fingers. And as I can’t, I get troubled.
All things 99 pence per item
Two days after my landing here I was pretty convinced of the fact that my tiny little kitchen would have been totally superfluous. Upper Woburn Place, Bloomsbury, is a great address – for sure – but lacks of supermarkets. “Wine & Food” grocery shops sell all sort of thing, but nothing eatable. I sware. And they all share a category: unaffordable prices.
I chose for a stroll in Camden Town lastly resigned to the obviousness of my close poverty. And…surprise!!! An aged and desolate sign enticed me into a just as desolate and aged store. Unbelievable. All things only cost 99 pence per item. Any item. And is nearly eatable (I will let you know). An unrestrained craving for shopping assailed me, and I bought everything. Orange juice, olives, tomato sauce, cereals, chips, magdalenas, tissues. Even my favourite breakfast biscuits, the “galletas maria” I used to eat in Miami with my beloved Giuse…
Airport of Gatwick, July 23
I got to London at 11:45 am. The easyjet flight has taken 1 hour and a half to commit me to the London’s world. The woman at the customs asked me the reason for my visit but she catched me unprepared. Questions inside my head are rolled into a ball. Studying. Living. Working. Knowing. Let me think it over.
“Writing”, I told her. “All the rest is additional”. She stared at me, my answer does not sufficed for her. It might be noble, but lacks usability. That’s what her look betrays, and I am used to it.
“I can’t give up”, me trying again, “writing is a drug and I am looking for its side effects”.
