SOURCE: “Big News from Small Worlds.” New York Review of Books 40, no. 7 (8 April 1993): 22.

In the following review, the critic offers a positive assessment of The Collected Stories and compares the collection to Adam Thorpe's Ulverton.

“As they were controversial, they won him a sort of fame: some thought they were serious, well made, and compulsive … 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.”

Thus is described the work of the documentary film maker who is the central character of one of John McGahern's stories [in The Collected Stories]: it is also, whether consciously or unconsciously on the author's part, an accurate account of popular and critical attitudes toward McGahern's own work. Throughout his career...