RaveThe GuardianThe Gathering isn't a simple thing at all – it's a genuine attempt to stare down both love and death, to anatomise their pains and fears and peculiar pleasures. At which point I ought to talk about the sheer physicality of Enright's writing. The one word roar recurs though the text, as if to remind us of the din within each of her characters … Although Liam appears relatively seldom, his portrayal is pitch-perfect. The beautiful boy who destroys himself, the huge eyes begging impossible love, the hearts of his women rifled and then broken before the final act of liquid self-destruction, a march into the sea, pockets full of stones … For Enright, the body, the mind, the will, the world, the heart – all work upon each other in a terrible, wonderful roar of life.
