How long is it?
272 pages in the Black Cat 2007 paperback edition.
Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 57 / 100High
- Length
- 272 pagesBlack Cat · 2007
- Reading time
- 5 h 30 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 5 / 5
About 5 h 30 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 11 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
In Dublin, thirty-nine-year-old Veronica Hegarty helps arrange the wake of her brother Liam, who drowned in the sea at Brighton. As their scattered siblings gather, she tries to understand the brother she was closest to, returning to memories of their grandmother Ada’s house and a childhood event she cannot recall with certainty. Her grief also exposes resentment toward her mother and dissatisfaction with her own marriage and family life.
Reader notes
Veronica’s first-person narration circles through recollection and imagined family history, its sadness interrupted by dry humor and sharp, sometimes bitter observations. The movement is associative, not chronological; childhood sexual abuse, suicide and heavy drinking are serious subjects throughout.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Dense · Fragmentary · Lyrical · Witty
- Tone
- Dark · Intimate · Melancholic · Reflective
- Structure
- Fragmented · Nonlinear
- Driven by
- Character · Relationships · Voice
- Point of view
- First person
- Setting
- Brighton · Dublin · England · Ireland
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 4 / 5
- Ideas
- 4 / 5
- Structure
- 4 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Addiction
- Family
- Grief
- Guilt
- Memory
- Trauma
Content notes
- Violence
- Mild
- Sexual content
- Strong
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Strong
- Abuse
- Strong
- Self-harm or suicide
- Strong
Standing and awards
Highly regarded
- Booker Prize, 2007
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Black Cat · 2007 · Paperback. ISBN 9780802170392.
How long does it take to read The Gathering?
About 5 hours 30 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 272-page Black Cat edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Anne Enright
Anne Enright is an Irish writer whose fiction and essays attend closely to family, love, identity, and motherhood. Her prose is often dense, lyrical, and sharply witty, moving through fragments and revisions rather than orderly explanation. In The Gathering, a sister’s attempt to understand her brother’s death unfolds through memories distorted by grief, anger, shame, and competing family stories. The narrative makes uncertainty part of its structure, treating recollection as an intimate but unreliable form of inquiry. Enright’s range also includes The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, a fictional account of an Irish woman who became a powerful figure in nineteenth-century Paraguay.
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Edition and details
- Publisher
- Black Cat
- Publication year
- 2007
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 272
- ISBN
- 9780802170392
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 2007
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction · Contemporary literary · Family saga · Psychological fiction
- Editions
- 13
- Languages
- 4 (English, French, Polish, Unspecified)
The catalog does not yet include a matching edition. Details may differ between editions.