John McGahern Summary

John McGahern's fiction continually tempts critics to compare him with other novelists. An Irishman, he has undergone the inevitable comparison with Joyce, which few Irish novelists escape. One critic... Read more

In the following essay, Kennedy discusses the recurring themes in The Barracks, The Pornographer, The Leavetaking, and The Dark. Well known and highly praised in Ireland and England, John McGahern... Read more

In the following review, O'Rourke compares McGahern's The Collected Stories to the writings of D. H. Lawrence. On the heels of William Trevor's Collected Stories Ireland sends us ... Read more

In the following review, Grennan offers a positive assessment of The Collected Stories, complimenting the collection as “wonderfully rich.” The voice that tells these splendid stories [i... Read more

In the following review, Shannon offers a positive assessment of The Collected Stories. When John McGahern's first novel, The Barracks, was published twenty years ago, a reviewer in the London ... Read more

In the following review, Barnacle offers a positive assessment of That They May Face the Rising Sun. A couple of downshifters, Joe and Kate Ruttledge, have left their advertising jobs in London and mo... Read more

In the following essay, Lloyd discusses the influence rural Ireland has on McGahern's novels. Although heralded in England and Ireland, John McGahern has gone virtually unnoticed in the United ... Read more

Pryce-Jones is an Austrian-born English novelist, biographer, and critic. In the following review, he discusses the bleak vision presented in the short fiction of Nightlines. The Ireland of John McGah... Read more

Banville is an Irish novelist and critic. Below, he discusses the defining characteristics of McGahern's short fiction. As they were controversial, they won him a sort of fame: some thought th... Read more

In the following review, Sampson traces the development of McGahern's short fiction. Nightlines. Getting Through. High Ground. In retrospect, the titles of John McGahern's three volumes ... Read more

Thomas Kilroy, playwright and novelist, provided the critic of Irish fiction with one of those clarifying and organising generalizations which illumine much that one has almost unconsciously accepted,... Read more

Craig is an Irish editor and critic. In the following review of High Ground, she surveys the characters and settings of McGahern 's short fiction and praises his realism and attention to detail... Read more

Nightlines, the title of John McGahern's first collection of stories, (1970), promises a series of sombre narratives; Getting Through, the title of his second, (1978), connects communication wi... Read more

Enright is an English man of letters who has spent most of his career abroad, teaching English literature at universities in Egypt, Japan, Berlin, Thailand, and Singapore, The author of critically res... Read more