“We were putting the phone down on each other all over New York, gently, we were extricating ourselves.” It’s an exquisite way to convey the desires and anxieties of this lovely, dying group of friends, whom Dan, a “raging blank of a human being,” moves through in complete denial. What really distinguishes the story, though, is that it’s told in the plural first person: “We did not want to be loved when we got sick, because that would be unbearable, and love was all we looked for, in our last days,” As in all Anne Enrights work, fiction and non-fiction, this is a book of daring. Cast in the shadow of a disease that’s killing homosexuals, this story traces the collapse of a subculture of artistic and sexual freedom, but it also celebrates the persistence of affection in the face of relentless mourning. The Gathering sends fresh blood through the Irish literary tradition. But before that setting grows too comfortable, the next chapter makes several striking shifts: Now we’re in New York, 11 years later, and Dan is a confused and confusing man planning his wedding to a young woman and sleeping with guys on the side.
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