Product Description

Set in rural Ireland, John McGahern's second novel is about adolescence and a guilty, yet uncontrollable sexuality that is contorted and twisted by both puritanical state religion and a strange, powerful and ambiguous relationship between son and widower father. Against a background evoked with quiet, undemonstrative mastery, McGahern explores with precision and tenderness a human situation, superficially very ordinary, but inwardly an agony of longing and despair.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75828 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
John McGahern was born in Dublin in 1934 and brought up in the West of Ireland. He was a graduate of University College, Dublin. He worked as a Primary School teacher and held various academic posts at universities in Britain, Ireland and America. In the opinion of the Observer, John McGahern was 'Ireland's greatest living novelist'. He was the author of six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories, and was the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, the American-Irish Award, the Prix Etrangere Ecureuil and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Amongst Women, which won both the GPA and the Irish Times Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a four-part BBC television series. His work has appeared in anthologies and has been translated into many languages. His last book, Memoir, was published in 2005.

Customer Reviews

The Dark - a light on the psyche of 60s Ireland
In this novel, McGahern ably explores the pain of adolescence
in rural Ireland imn the 1960s. Whilst much of the imagery employed by the author may now seem cliched, its power resides
in the sparing prose.

The story is told through the voice of a young Irish boy and the conflict he experiences with his violent widower father.
The priesthood offer one way out of from the seemingly hopeless eternal drudgery on the farm.

Out of such apparently unpromising material McGahern evinces
the inner world of the protagonist.