Product Description

This is the first novel by John McGahern, originally published in 1963. Elizabeth Regan, after years of freedom - and loneliness - marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. The children are not her own; her husband is straining against his job in the police force; and her own life, threatened by illness, seems to be losing the last vestiges of its purpose. Moving between tragedy and savage comedy, desperation and joy, "The Barracks" is a novel of haunting power.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128451 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 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

One of the best Irish fiction pieces I have read.
I am writing from the United States. There was an article by Colm Toibin in The London Review of Books (10 August 2000) in which he stated that one of the best Irish fiction pieces in the 50's and 60's was the Barracks. So I scarfed up a copy. And I read it today, in two sittings. I was blown away. I have read many contemporary Irish writers and this book had to be placed in the top five. The main character, Elizabeth Reegan, was a woman of infinite wisdom. And the reader was allowed into her thoughts, that usually she did not allow to be voiced to her husband or his friends. She throughout the novel was dying of breast cancer and given this was written in the '60s and she ignored the early warning signs, one knew she was going to die from it. But the thoughts that she allowed me to hear from the beginning of her illness to the end were... (true)....her innermost fears, her beliefs, her lament of the unfairness of life, her loving attentions paid to her husband (bitter about his job) and her step-children... During and after reading this beautifully-written work of art (I would be surprised that this author matched this intensity of writing). I was worried in this day and age of pathetic fiction bestsellers that this book would be out of print. But it isn't. Thanks, Colm Toibin for telling me about this book. I would have liked to meet Elizabeth Reegan.....she was a woman trapped in a world that forced her into a subservient role....but she endured it with grace and class.

A work of understated genius
Brilliant review below says it all. However, I could not believe this book held my attention, it is all about the trivialites of everyday life & all the little rituals that give it structure. It also highlights the inner life that is within us all & about making sense of the boredom we suffer daily in striving to make sense of our existence. Found the book very moving & as in all good literature there are fundamental human truths that hit home and I could relate to Elizabeth slowly dying & Reegan trapped by his occuaption. Both equally desparate & ultimately alone facing a seemingly futile struggle.

The dragging grind of obligation
John McGahern's first novel, The Barracks, is very much a story of his own Irish childhood. His father was a policeman, and his mother died of cancer and in the novel, the father is a sergeant in a rural barracks house, whose wife, Elizabeth, dies of cancer. The novel is largely narrated by Elizabeth, who reminisces about an earlier love affair with a doctor, when she worked in London as a nurse. Elizabeth is not happy, although her relationship with her husband, Reegan, is tender at times, the hard slog of continual daily chores and the obligations she has to feed and care for her husband's three children (he was married before, and his first wife died of cancer too) and manage the house becomes a deadening burden to her, especially when she becomes ill. Her husband is much exercised by the contentious relationship he has with Superintendent Quirke. He is a forthright man and hates the servile attitude he is forced to assume with Quirke.

A novel about a woman dying of cancer - a woman burdened, depressed, miserable. Why would anyone want to read it? It is written with brisk, unpitying, remorseless realism, and yet there are many gentler moments. Elizabeth is good with the children and her husband. She retains a kind of innocence, in spite of her affair in London and she maintains a distance with the local women. Her every instinct is to avoid conflict, although when the local priest tries to insist that she join a women's organisation (from whom he exacts small obligations of work in the church), she resists him. She has a brave self-sufficiency that means more to her than merely fitting in with the rest of the community.

A sobering read about a woman with little to be happy about and a dragging grind of obligation, condemned to a life of unending domestic toil, this book is profoundly depressing; though the writing and the realism lift it high above the level of the average misery memoir, it is a book difficult to enjoy.