As this book won the Booker in 2008, I feel the need to share just how bad I found it. There seems to be a disturbing trend in literature recently to have over-written books that have no plot and too much middle class angst. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good meandering slow book if it’s well written – such as anything by Kazuo Ishiguro, or Murakami when he’s not dipping in magic realism. The Gathering, though, was not well written at all – it was confused, pretentious and boring. I do not recommend this book at all, and since reading it have lost respect for the Booker as a marker of a good book. It has also well put me off the sad Irish childhood genre of books.
4/10
