Irish author Anne Enright pulled out a grand surprise by winning the Man booker prize of 2007. She won this year’s 50,000 pound award for Fiction for her novel, The Gathering” 

Enright is a 45 year old, little known Irish author who began her career as a television producer. She was the dark horse in this year’s race at the Booker, which saw 5 other solid works by eminent authors in the reckoning. Prominent among the authors she pipped was Ian McEwan for his On Chesil Beach and Lloyd Jones for “Master Pip”. Other contenders included Nicola Barker, Mohshin Hamid and Indra Sinha.

The Gathering is Enright’s forth novel. It tells the tale of a dysfunctional Irish family who come together in Dublin to grieve the suicidal death of their brother Liam. The story is told through the eyes of Veronica Hogarty who is hardest hit by the news of her brother’s suicide.

The book takes us through vignettes of life of Veronica and her brother, her child hood memories and the dark secrets they share. Starting from the time they first grew close living with their grandmother; Enright comes to reveal how their love becomes complicated. Loss is a theme resonating in this book with dollops of dark humor. Enright herself has described the book as the “intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie.”

Enright is the third Irish writer to win the Booker Prize after John Banville in 2005 and Roddy Doyle in 1993. She persuaded the judges-poet Wendy Coop, journalist Giles Foden, critic Ruth Scurr, Actor Imogen Stubbs, and Chairman of the Jury and director of London school of Economics, Howard Davies that her book was the best. The judges used a combined voting method, a weighted system, a simple ranking system and a single transferable vote, all of which added to the victory of the Gathering.

Enright has previously written The Portable Virgin, a collection of Stories, three novels and a scientific work. The Gathering had sold only 3253 copies compared to 120,362 for McEwan’s book and 5170 of Lloyd Jones’s, Mister Pips. But with the Booker recognition, the Gathering is set to storm the markets worldwide.