When it comes to the Man Booker prize, it’s just like the screenwriter William
Goldman said: “No one knows anything.” How else to explain the bookies’
unwillingness to pick the winner? Indeed, when Anne Enright, the
little-known Irish author of The Gathering, and the “rank outsider” in the
race for the 2007 prize, romped past the favourites, Ian McEwan and Lloyd
Jones, on Tuesday night, she became the fifth consecutive writer to confound
the odds.
Enright never put much faith in the bookmakers – “They don’t read, so how
would they know?” – but she was nonetheless shocked at landing the prize.
She is the fourth Irish winner, after Iris Murdoch, Roddy Doyle and John
Banville, and she knows that the £50,000 cheque is only the start of her
residency at literature’s top table. But, she says: “I don’t know whether it
will make it easier or harder for me to write now.”
Such ambivalence can probably be assigned to a little morning-after
tenderness. The 45-year-old mother of two managed just four hours’ sleep
between Tuesday night’s party and her first media appointment on Wednesday,
an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Now, it is late morning, and
Enright, in a black spotty dress, her short hair needing a little attention,
is experiencing “a light throbbing in the head”.
She was right to celebrate. The Booker prize has not just raised her stock,
but, in a difficult market for modern fiction, served as a welcome fillip
for her sales. Before Enright’s appearance on the shortlist, The Gathering
had sold, according to Nielsen Book-Scan, fewer than 1,000 copies. By
Tuesday, it had sold more than 3,000. It will now, she can confidently
assume, ship a few thousand more. “Initially, I saw it all as a nice little
boost,” she says. “When I got on the shortlist, I realised there was really
no downside to the whole business. The only thing was, I’d had such a good
time on the shortlist, I was dreading the announcement, when it would all
come to an end. But now, I think, ‘Oh my God, I’ve won the Booker.’ ” The
Gathering may have beaten all-comers to the Booker, but it will struggle to
squeeze into most Top 10 beach reads. The novel surrounds a sprawling Irish
family, the Hegartys, and the decision of one of their number, Liam, to
drown himself in Brighton wearing a Day-Glo jacket. What follows is an
investigation by the narrator, Veronica – the seventh oldest, or fifth
youngest, child, depending on how you look at it – into the family’s
hinterland, including a recollection of sexual abuse, rendered without a
whiff of mawkishness in Enright’s lean prose.
Despite the quality of the writing, the novel is undeniably gloomy. Indeed,
when Robert Harris, bestselling author of Fatherland and Pompeii, launched
his invective against the Booker last week, saying agents put pressure on
authors to write “Booker-winning” novels that were “grim and unreadable and
utterly off-putting to many readers”, he might have had it in mind.
“Well, nobody told me to write a grim book,” Enright says. “I’ve never been
biddable as a writer. If someone did tell me what to write, it just wouldn’t
work when I got to my desk. So they can say what they like, really. My
business is to write books. I can’t have a larger opinion about the Booker
prize.”
The business of writing books started for Enright when she was given a
typewriter for her 21st birthday. Since then, she has studied for a Masters
in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where she was taught
by Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. But her life as a novelist began in
earnest only after a stint working as a producer on an Irish chat show, and
a subsequent breakdown. “We were live three nights a week,” she says. “We
drank our heads off. It was inevitable it should crash and burn at some
stage.” Since then, she has written four novels: The Pleasure of Eliza
Lynch, What Are You Like?, The Wig My Father Wore and The Gathering. She has
also published a nonfiction work, Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood,
and a collection of stories, The Portable Virgin. Her next collection,
Taking Pictures, will be published in March.
Evidence of her voracious reading life, too, shines out in The Gathering. She
imagines, for instance, the 1920s Dublin of Veronica’s grandparents – a
place and time for ever associated with James Joyce, whose work has inspired
her own. Was she nervous about comparisons? “No, and, if you don’t mind me
saying, that’s quite a masculine way of looking at it,” she says. “There are
writers in Ireland who think Joyce threw a great shadow, who are in awe of
him. I think that’s all bollocks. He cast a great light.
He opened all the doors and gave freedom for people to write what they wanted.
If I have a slight homage, it’s not because I want to come out better than
him. It’s not a fisticuffs with Joyce.”
Irish writers have long recognised her talent – Colm Toibin’s prediction that
her “ship would come in” has proved accurate – but she has never been a “big
name”.
And, if Howard Davies, chairman of the Booker judges, is to be believed, it is
harder for small names to receive the acclaim established writers get.
Davies said the judges “were surprised by the reverential tone adopted by
reviewers in relation to books that, to us, did not come off”.
Enright has received no such favours. The Sunday Times critic Hugo Barnacle
mauled The Gathering, calling it “pretentious” and fix-ated with the
Freudian notion of “the dirty-handkerchief side of life”, before concluding
it was “wearing”. Enright, who reads all her reviews, if only to see how
much space they take up on the page, was phlegmatic. “I do remember that
review,” she says. “It weirded me out a bit. I have to say, if there’s any
obsession with sex, it’s on the critic’s part. But reviews are always a
mixed bag. The response to this has been strong – by which I mean, you
either like the voice and are behind it, or you don’t and find the whole
thing irritating. That’s good – I know I’ve written a book then.
“In Ireland, it’s interesting, because there isn’t really a culture of
critical praise,” she continues. “But the book has really sold well there, I
suspect by word of mouth. Reviews are only a barometer of what critics are
thinking, which is not quite the whole picture.”
Enright’s ambition is, she says, simply to write. It is easier some days than
others. In the house in Bray, Co Wicklow, that she shares with her husband,
Martin, and her two children, aged 4 and 7, writing is sandwiched into
school time and dark hours. “I have no real discipline,” she says. “I just
write when I can. I have no targets. There has been a significant amount of
juggling in the past, but it really works. I need to write. I go a bit
bonkers if I don’t. Having children focuses you, because you have such
limited time.”
If Enright thinks her time is limited now, she should consider what a year of
being the Booker winner will do for her schedule. She has already received a
taste. As our interview comes to a close, a PR apparatchik whisks her to the
next appointment. I ask what she is doing for the rest of the day. “Who
knows?” she says. “My life is no longer my own.”
— The Gathering is available at the Sunday Times Books First price of
£11.69 (inc p&p); 0870 165 8585.
Well, a Booker Prize winner who has an honest opinion too! Best put her down right away because we don't like what she says. We don't have to agree with her but have I missed something ? I had no Idea that Anne Enright's views rather than her writing were subject to the judges' scrutiny last week. I shall buy the book,read,respond and hopefully enjoy .If I don't enjoy I hope I shall be able to formulate a reasoned opinion,when I get to the last sentence. Surely reading broadens the mind not narrows it into reacting to half an article . Please read the whole article and note the closing sentence.
Madge, Gloucester, Gloucestershire
Sorry, but the McCanns are themselves a self perpetuating ongoing publicity machine who appear to revel in publicity.
Her views seem arrogrant to you but definitely not to me.
Whether or not they are charged and jailed or all charges dropped; they'll be writing the book which will be a best seller as people like you will buy it - irrespective of the content or validity of content.
Paul Davis, Kilburn, UK
Well I guess that if she'd come bottom of the pile - as she might well have done- she'd be saying - I really don't need to write , and truth to tell, it makes me a little bonkers.
Sour Grapes , Crouch End ,
I think the first thing Anne Enright should do is apologise to the McCanns and devote her prize money to the fund set up to find Madeleine.
Her "think-piece" on the McCanns in the LRB was unnecessary, arrogant and thoroughly ill-judged. Understandably she has refused all subsequent reprint requests in the hope of avoiding the "Evil Anne Enright" label, and in order to maximise the earnings potential of her gloomy little book.
Rob, Dubai, UAE