For anyone that reads, McGahern is an essential reading companion. He speaks for the man in Dublin, single running into middle age, or brimming it, and whose heart is a flutter for a nurse too far, or a far field where a father is dying into a landscape that nobody wants, that nobody values. McGahern maps the difficult transition of Ireland from a largely rural perspective, and then from the rural to urban. A sef confessed Joyce freak, McGahern has tried to emulate Portrait, and Dubliners in his own way. The rain will fall very gently on this mans tombstone.

This career-spanning collection deserves to stand on a short list that might include Dubliners, the collected stories of Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, K. Mansfield, Malamud (and you may as well include Maupassant, Chekhov, Babel, and Tolstoy on that list). The understated magnificence of these stories raises them to the level of high art. Read these now.

Whatever you're doing, stop now and go and buy this book. McGahern is among the greatest writers of short fiction of the modern era (a short list including Joyce, Chekhov, Hemingway, Babel), and perhaps the greatest practitioner working today. Tell your friends.

This novel was brought to my attention by the Guardian Unlimited in an article about banned books. I assumed it must be a good read, and I wasn't disappointed. My only cause for surprise is that it doesn't seem to be very well-known, that I am the second person to write a review.

My own transition from adolescence to adulthood was far from smooth, so I enjoy reading coming-of-age stories because I can relate to them on a very emotional level, and this novel is one of the most realistic to date, for many reasons, including sexual self-experimentation (as a Catholic, the main character is plagued with guilt), self-doubt, the confusion and fear, and so abundantly on.

But what makes this story all that and much more are the intense thoughts and ideas of this intelligent young man. The more he emotes, the more I also felt. He struggles with age-old philosophical questions and through introspection decides whether to become a priest. I highlighted some brilliant quotes about life and death in my copy. I could relate to his "dog's chance" of succeeding as a result of an unsupportive father, with whom he has a love-hate relationship. A perfectly able young man hobbled by a household of fear, anger, and constant complaining....

McGahern's literary style of switching among different points of view, as well as alternating between past and present tenses, truly sets the appropriate mood, and it's pure genius. This novel is timely considering the sex-abuse scandals in the Church. Although it feels as if the story ends abruptly, and somewhat anti-climactic, leaving the reader wanting for more, I like to think that it signifies a good book. I wish more authors would write true-to-life stories like this one.

A poetically written story of a boy's coming of age in rural Ireland, "The Dark" is a journey through teenage years full of self doubt, sexual frustration and religious fear. The protagonist, whose name we're never actually told, is an intelligent boy who excels academically, though he doubts and fears his own future. He wonders if he should become a priest, go to the university to be a scientist, join the civil service or end up a potato farmer like his father. Through the years of indecision and study, the boy endures his widowed father's physical and verbal abuse. But as he grows older and learns more about the truth of the world, the past, present and future take on new perspectives and his relationship with his father changes from one of fear and hate to a subdued respect and love.

"The Dark" is lusciously written with a poetic grace hard to find in most contemporary novels. McGahern gently pulls the reader in, not only to the boy's psychological world, but also into the physical: the rural Irish landscape, the dark fearful Catholic confessional box and the squalid Irish farmhouse dominated by an abusive father. McGahern pulls you in, but does not need to hold you there; you'll stay of your own free will in this simultaneously simple and complex world, and find yourself haunted by it after you leave.

Set in rural Ireland, this uncompromising family drama revolves around Michael Moran, the father of five. A member of the IRA during the time of The Troubles, years ago, Michael has apparently repressed violent traumas which, we are led to believe, are responsible for his withdrawal from society and his current violence against his family--it is not the result of drink or the frustrations of poverty. Now the father of teenage children, he is disillusioned by what he sees as the fruits of this war, remarking, "Look at the country now. Run by a crowd of small-minded gangsters out for their own good."

Within his own household, Michael upholds all the values he fought for years ago. He's a hard, independent man, beholden to no one, and his word is law. To his family, however, he is often a tyrant--obstinate, cruel, full of hatred, quick to anger, and reluctant to apologize-and his second wife Rose his three daughters, and his two sons are "inordinately grateful for the slightest good will." Outwardly religious, Michael daily recites the Rosary, looking for religious help for his inner turmoil and the complications of his daily life. As he says, "the war was the best part of our lives. Things were never so simple and clear again."

With a main character who is never endearing, McGahern challenges the reader to empathize with Michael and understand why the women in his family remain tied to him emotionally, even after they have successfully escaped his domination and established independent lives away from the farm. Gradually, the reader begins to understand the overpowering need to form connections with the past, even when it is not pleasant--to forgive one's parents for their limitations while remaining strong and faithful to oneself. In clear, straightforward prose of immense power, McGahern piles mundane detail upon detail, creating a sensitive family story of great universality, one which will give the reader much to ponder.

John McGahern's "Amongst Women" is a novel I readily identify with. The truths it reveals about family ties and the needless pain and suffering they sometimes engender are universal, cutting across all cultures. The story may be set in Ireland and specifically about the Morans, but all through the book, I was keenly aware of some home truths which McGahern deftly delivers and gives the novel its special poignance. Humanity is presented in all its ordinariness and with stark realism. The patriach may seem a tyrant in Great Meadows. The state of his family's emotional wellbeing fluctuates according to his mood swings. His second wife is a saint. She bears with and makes excuses for him. With mutual moral support, his daughters help hold the family together. The boys rebel to different degrees, leading to different outcomes. Is old man Moran to blame ? Yes and no. There are always reasons for everything. It's the way life is. McGahern's novel hints at Irish/English hostilities and we understand that this has played its part in Moran's character development. There are few dramatic highs and lows. Events march to the normal tempo of life. McGahern's prose is plain, straightforward and true. As in real life, the novel is not neatly segmented into chapters. The storytelling is seamless and timeless. The setting is fairly modern but the attitude strangely conservative. Maybe that's intentional. Maybe not. "Amongst Women" isn't going to grab you by the collar but it will grow on you. It's a Booker Prize nominee and a Irish Literary Award winner. A worthy read.

A beautfully written and very touching novel

This is a quiet, happy, gem of novel by a proven literary master. Set in recent time in a small rural community in northwest Ireland, the story follows a year in the lives of several lakeside residents of small neighboring farms. The very common place events of their lives are described in episodic fashion. The central figures are a childless Anglo/Irish couple who left their successful professional careers in London to reside on a farm by the lake. A theme throughout the narrative is about Irish people who leave for England and later return. But the primary theme is the almost seamless and repetitive lives of the people of this almost idyllic community. This is a place where the accidental death of a lamb or the sudden appearance of a new telephone pole are major events. These lives and relationships are told in prose that is so poetically descriptive that, without being at all cloying, almost glistens on the page. The vision of a heron that rises in the mist everytime someone walks by the lakeshore is palpable. There are no chapters in the book. The various episodes are strung together one after another, but this seems fitting where there are no large, climactic events. The people and their speech are quaintly Irish, and it is easy to love and admire each of them in spite of a host of personality quirks and ritualistic behavior. The story resolves itself with the death and funeral of one of the leading characters, replete with the traditional laying out of the corpse, the wake and the digging of the grave in the family plot (many Irish graves contain the remains of several generations of individuals). This episode is described in such detail and matter-of-fact forthrightness that one feels intimately involved. The original title of the book when published in Ireland was "That They May Face The Rising Sun". This more appropriate title comes from a conversation among the grave diggers where one of them explains that people are always buried with their heads toward the west so that when they are eventually resurrected from the grave, they will rise from the ground facing the rising sun. It is an image, both morbid and uplifting, that sticks long after the book is finished.

This was a really wonderful pastoral book of country life in Ireland. A year in the country, where you get to know a number of characters living near each other, and observe both the change of season and seasonal activities, as well as the slow growth of perspective in people's lives as things change, the rhythms of life and death. The most wonderful thing about the book is how real the characters feel, as if they were friends that you've been getting to know over the year. I didn't want the book to end.

A gentleness and warmth infuse this paean to small town Irish life and the usually loving connections among the residents. Almost plotless in the traditional sense, the book achieves surprising power through its sensitive and sometimes humorous portrayals of "everyday" characters as they work their land, respond to the needs of their neighbors, celebrate milestones, and observe the lyrically described changes in flora and fauna around the lake during one year. It's a magnificent novel, a testament (and, unfortunately, perhaps also a memorial) to a vanishing way of life and the enduring connections, both among men and with the land, which have shaped the Irish character and spawned its traditions.

The Ruttledges have returned to Ireland after advertising careers in London, renewing connections with their kin and settling "by the lake," where they are greeted first by Jamesie Murphy and his wife Mary, who bring food, and then by the unforgettable roue of the village, John Quinn, who wants them to find him a wife from out of town, as he's already too well known to be successful in his own village. Other characters, each unique, give color and a sense of reality to life by the lake: Jimmy Joe McKiernan, the local Provo leader who led the breakout from Long Kesh; the pathetic Bill Evans, an orphan brought up by the nuns, then farmed out to an unfeeling family to work when he was 14; Cecil Pierce, the local Protestant; Johnny Murphy, Jamesie's brother, who visits each summer from London, where he lives in relative exile after being dumped by the woman he loved; the Shah, a Ruttledge relative who became hugely successful in the junk business; Patrick Ryan, who never seems to finish the building projects he's doing for his neighbors; and many others who illustrate the charms and frustrations of small town life and the forces which have shaped it. Significantly, all the main characters are middle-aged or older, the young having been lured already to big cities. As one character says, "After us there'll be nothing but the water hen and swan."

As the reader shares the passage of the year with the residents, observing the celebrations of birth, the rites of death, and the homely activities which give meaning to life by the lake, it's impossible not to feel a sense of profound melancholy and to mourn the loss of this rapidly disappearing life. As McGahern himself says, "[The days] did not feel particularly quiet or happy, but through them ran the sense...that there would come a time when these days would be looked back on as happiness, all that life could give of contentment and peace." With its profound openness to the sensations of the moment, its constant awareness of even the subtlest changes in nature, and its joy in human connections, it's a life which few harried city dwellers ever know.

I was given this book as a present and not sure what to expect. As I read it I could relate to many of the images and idiosyncracies of the people. I initially was disappointed with the book but as I reflected on it, I thought in fact that I was the problem and not the book. In this age of fast living and hustle and bustle, this book is a superb gentle reminder of easy living and what life is all about. It captures rural living exactly as it is and was many years ago, and all in all an enjoyable reflective read. Life will not pass you by reading it.