The New Leader, March 1st, 2002
By John McGahern Knopf. 336 pp. $24.00.
IRISH AUTHOR John McGahern's new novel, his first since the well-received Amongst Women (1990), gets off to a decidedly unpromising start. There is, for openers, the opening: "The morning was clear. There was no wind on the lake. There was also a great stillness. When the bells rang out for Mass, the strokes trembling on the water, they had the entire world to themselves." Oh, an already restive reader may respond, so it was not a dark and stormy night.
Next, a character named Jamesie sneaks into the house of a couple called the Ruttledges and teasin...
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