- Mass Market Paperback: 1 pages
- Publisher: Faber And Faber Ltd.; New edition edition (Mar 30 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0571203728
- ISBN-13: 978-0571203727
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 159 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,395,596 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Booklist
Celebrated Irish author McGahern has written six novels, most recently By the Lake (2002) and four short story collections. This is the first U.S. publication of his first novel, which was written in 1963. It is the story of Elizabeth Reegan, who, after years of being alone, marries a widower with three children. Her husband, a policeman, is a hard and bitter man who never passes up the opportunity to stick it to his rule-mongering boss. Endless chores and her deep awareness of her inability to soothe her husband's restlessness or to be an essential part of her stepchildren's lives have left Elizabeth dispirited. When she learns that she has breast cancer, her feelings about the futility of her life deepen, but she also sees the value in trying to meet her fate with dignity. Shot through with fatalism and told in reserved and beautiful prose, this authoritative novel conveys both the bleakness of the Irish civil servant's lot in the 1960s and the courage needed to face down frustration and despair. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Mass Market Paperback edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Mass Market Paperback edition.
Book Description
After years of freedom - and loneliness - Elizabeth marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. Moving between tragedy and savage comedy, desperation and joy, this was McGahern's first novel.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Extraordinarily moving account of decline and resistance, Aug 8 2004
By John L Murphy "Fionnchú" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Barracks (Mass Market Paperback)
I had to look for a long time for a copy of this novel when I wanted to read it last year; it's fantastic that it's been brought back into print in the US and abroad. The success of McG's recent novels Amongst Women and By the Lake/That They May Face the Rising Sun casts a soft light upon his earlier fiction from the 1960s, but this novel is no romantic landscape.In the bogs of west-central Ireland, a policeman cycles about pretending to do his duty while his wife takes care of the children and waits to find out whether she has a terminal disease. Told in a powerful voice largely from within her consciousness, the narrative style shows amazing assurance for a then emerging writer. The last scene from her point-of-view ranks in my estimation with Joyce's closing of "The Dead."
I heard McG introduced at a reading as the greatest Irish author from the second half of the 20th (and 21st?) century. This is no hyperbole. While his reticence means he is not the showman that Seamus Heaney is, and while his oblique commentary acknowledges the trauma of the past Irish century rather than exploiting it like many of his lesser contemporaries, McG's dignity in the face of 1960s censorship (for subsequent work) commands respect and a renewal of interest in his entire body of work. Read this story and you'll find the ebb of rural Ireland charted precisely.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Heartbreaking Tale of a Woman Already a Ghost in Her Own Home, Aug 3 2006
By Bluestalking Reader "Bluestalking Reader" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Barracks (Mass Market Paperback)
The late John McGahern wrote incredibly poetic and beautiful novels set in his native country. The Barracks is about a middle-aged woman named Elizabeth Reegan who marries a widowed man with three children. A frustrated police officer with dreams of buying his own farm, and fulfilling the legacy of the Reegans, her husband is a man all but oblivious to Elizabeth and her needs. Already a widower, when he learns Elizabeth has breast cancer he can hardly bring himself to face the reality. When his first wife died his only thought was what a horror it was seeing her in the morgue. Any feelings of love or support are simply beyond him, leaving Elizabeth to deal with mortality on her own.As she worsens, declining into death, Elizabeth is able to observe the family as an outsider. Already all but a ghost, she watches them go about their daily tasks while inside she's screaming with frustration, hoping for any bit of attention or kindness she doesn't dare ask for.
The Barracks is a heartbreaking novel, and a masterful one. McGahern gets inside the head of Elizabeth, expressing her plight with such empathy it's staggering. The prose is poetic and lyrical. I would even say it's flawless, and as perfect a work of fiction as I've ever read.
What a loss to literature, and to humanity, when McGahern died earlier this year, leaving behind him an award-winning body of fiction. There simply aren't enough contemporary writers out there like McGahern, more's the pity, but that's what made him stand out like a shining light while he was alive. Better to have written like an angel and then been lost than never to have written like an angel at all.
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