the last book I ever read (Anne Enright's The Gathering, excerpt five)

from Anne Enright's The Gathering, winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize:

Val is a bachelor farmer in his seventies, so he should, by rights, be half-mad. But he looks chipper enough. Also clever. He does one thing at a time, that is the notable thing about him. He wipes his fingers on a paper napkin and looks for a place to set it down, and when he finds non, he scrunches the tissue up and tucks it firmly under the rim of his empty plate. Then he looks at one or other of us as if guessing at our lives: the way they have gone and the way they will end up. Uncle Val loved endings. He was especially fond of suicides. He used to talk us through the neighbours' houses, and tell us who shot himself and who used the rope. He told Liam a story about a local man who, when his wife refused to have sex with him, upped and got the kitchen knife and castrated himself in front of her.