Happy ending for saga of suicide and grief as Booker judges choose surprise winner

The bleak tale of a sprawling Irish family grieving the suicide of one of their clan was a rank outsider to scoop the most prestigious literary prize in the calendar. But last night, Anne Enright's fourth novel, The Gathering, was named the surprise winner of the £50,000 Man Booker Prize.

After two and a half hours of deliberation, involving three separate voting systems, the panel of judges, led by Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics, chose Enright's book for the £50,000 award.

The Gathering follows Veronica Hegarty, a mother of two in her late thirties coping with the suicide of her alcoholic brother, Liam, who drowned himself off the beach at Brighton. One of the 12-strong Hegarty clan, Veronica finds herself responsible for bringing her favourite brother's body back from England to Dublin for the wake at her childhood home. Liam's death brings back memories of a terrible event that happened at their grandmother's home when they were children.

Her grief plunges her marriage into crisis, leaving her unwilling to share the marital bed, preferring to pace their spacious family home at night with a glass of white wine in hand.

Sir Howard said: "We found it a very powerful, uncomfortable and even at times, angry book. It's an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language. We think she's an impressive novelist. We expect to hear a lot more from her.

"The book is very tightly structured. It's seen through the dyspeptic vision of the central character. She's a woman at a difficult moment in her life."

He added that when the judges drew up the long list of 13 books, they " probably did not expect that to be the winner, but it came through very strongly on re-readings".

Speaking after winning the award last night, Enright said: "All families are the same, I just multiplied them by three. There's always a drunk, there's always someone who has been interfered with as a child, there's always someone who is a colossal success. The essential thing about family is that it's something that's inescapable."

But the author insisted that despite its subject matter, her novel was not autobiographical. She said: "I did draw on the Irish tradition freely." The last Irish writer to win the prize was John Banville in 2005 with The Sea.

Enright, who was 45 last week, was born in Dublin, where she lives and works. Her previous novels are The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, What Are You Like? – which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and won the Encore Award – and The Wig My Father Wore, published in 1995. She has also published a collection of stories, The Portable Virgin, which won the Rooney Prize, and a work of non-fiction, Making Babies: Stumbling Into Motherhood.

The author said that her book was "the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepy. When people pick up a book, they may want something happy that will cheer them up. In that case, they shouldn't really pick up my book. " But last night she said of the narrator: "Veronica Hegarty... has a lot of go in her, a bit of banter."

Enright thanked the "love of my life", Martin Murphy, the father of her two children, as well as her parents and siblings.

Asked if she felt intimidated by the prize, Enright, who is working on a collection of short stories to be published in March, said: "I'm no spring chicken, so I don't think it will stop me squawking."