SOURCE: Craig, Patricia. “Everyday Ecstasies.” Times Literary Supplement (13 September 1985): 1001.

In the following review, Craig examines the parallels between McGahern's own life and the life of the protagonist in The Dark.

In “Oldfashioned,” perhaps the most highly-charged and accomplished of the stories in his new collection, [High Ground,] John McGahern allows himself a loaded observation about the works of an Irish documentary filmmaker:

they won him a sort of fame: some thought they were serious, well-made, and compulsive viewing, bringing things to light that were in bad need of light; but others maintained that they were humourless, morbid, and restricted to a narrow view that was more revealing of private obsessions than any truths about life or Irish life in general.

Change the medium, and you have a summary of McGahern's own experience, especially with regard to his novel The Dark (1965), against which a lot of affronted voices were...