Book review

Remembering John McGahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)

kimbofo

The best of life is lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything…

Sitting on the memorial bench in Ballinamore in March 2011

Today marks the 18th anniversary of Irish writer John McGahern’s death. Long-time followers of this blog, particularly when it was hosted on Typepad, will know that McGahern is my favourite writer.

McGahern was born in County Leitrim in 1934, the eldest child of seven. He was raised on a farm run by his mother, a part-time primary school teacher, while his father, a garda sergeant, lived in the garda barracks at Cootehall in County Roscommon. Following the untimely death of his mother in 1944, McGahern and his siblings moved into the garda barracks to live with their father.

These details are important because they shape so much of his writing; a quest to understand his father’s distant, often cruel behaviour and to make sense of his mother’s passing.

His output was small — just six novels The Barracks, The Dark, The Leavetaking, The Pornographer, Amongst Women, and That They May Face the Rising Sun (published as By the Lake in the US) — but each one beautifully polished and eloquent, with an emphasis on nature, rural Irish life, family dynamics and the tension between tradition and modernity.

He was also an acclaimed short story writer.

A new-to-me discovery

I discovered McGahern in the British summer of 2006 when I read his debut novel The Barracks. I’m not entirely sure why I came to read him, other than his death, aged 71, was relatively recent and he had been described in various newspaper articles as one of the most important writers of the 20th century.

In his obituary, published in The Guardian, he was hailed as “arguably the most important Irish novelist since Samuel Beckett”.

As a lover of Irish literary fiction, I was amazed I’d never heard of him before and I suspect that’s why I bought his first book, published in 1963, to see what all the fuss was about.

I loved The Barracks so much that I bought his entire backlist (of novels) in one hit. Unusually, they were all sitting on the shelves at Waterstone’s Picadilly, almost as if they were waiting for me to take them home. I also bought his memoir, imaginatively titled Memoir, one of the most affecting books I have ever read.

Over the next 12 months, I devoured all the novels bar one because I didn’t want to be in a position where I had no more McGahern books left to read. I’m a “completist” but even so, all these years later, The Pornographer still sits on my bookshelves unread. Perhaps this year I will be brave enough to read it.

I might even dig out some of his short story collections because since discovering McGahern I have long got over my prejudice against the short story form!

A visit to McGahern country

In March 2011, I had the privilege of going on a self-guided trip to “McGahern country” with my partner Mr Reading Matters. I wrote about the short trip on my old blog, long since deleted, but I thought now was a good time to resurrect it, particularly as I have seen reviews of his work on other book blogs in recent weeks.

I think he’s also come to many people’s attention via the success of Irish writer Claire Keegan, who champions his work and is clearly influenced by his style and themes.

Whatever the case, it always delights me to see readers discovering his writing and appreciating its quiet beauty (and dark overtones) for the first time.

Lough Rynn Castle Hotel in Co. Leitrim, Ireland

On our trip all those years ago, we stayed at the rather wonderful Lough Rynn Castle Hotel, in Mohill, Co. Leitrim, deliberately chosen because it housed a small library dedicated to John McGahern. It was the perfect base to explore the area, where the author spent much of his life.

The John McGahern Library

The John McGahern Library was opened by the then-Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern in November 2006 in the presence of McGahern’s widow, Madeline.

It’s housed in a small but sumptuous room on the hotel’s ground floor. The colour scheme is a mix of deep ruby reds and golds, complemented by mahogany timber furniture and glass-fronted bookshelves.

The shelves are lined with various hardcover books, mainly Irish novels and biographies. There is supposedly a selection of rare first edition volumes among them, but I was too scared to touch anything lest I caused damage — and, anyway, many of the titles were behind glass.

First editions of McGahern’s work under lock and key

Of course, a library dedicated to John McGahern has to include copies of his books and a collection of first editions can be seen in a glass display case over which a framed portrait of the great man hangs on the wall.

With its touch of luxury — the stiff-backed chairs, the small chandelier, the fireplace — I’m sure it’s a long way from the priest’s library that McGahern used to riffle through as a child but it is a truly beautiful and fitting memorial to one of Ireland’s greatest writers.

The shores of Lough Rynn

Glorious weather

During our trip, the weather was glorious — blue skies and sunshine, so unusual for Ireland where it can teem with rain for days on end. And as we pootled along the roads of McGahern’s native Leitrim we got a real sense of the beautiful landscape — rolling green hills, woodlands and lakes — that the writer loved so much.

Of course, there’s no “McGahern Country” map you can follow ( certainly in 2011, Discover Ireland hadn’t wised up to that one yet, but perhaps things have changed?), so much of our adventure was based on internet research and reference to a tour that my friend Trevor Cook had made the year before.

We got lost a few times and had one hair-raising episode in our hire car when we thought the wilds of rural Ireland would swallow us whole. We were looking for the farmhouse that McGahern had supposedly spent some time in as a child, but the gravel road we followed — and which we had spent a good half-hour looking for — led us a merry dance through bumpy terrain and wild woodland. Eventually, it became a boreen (rural track) masquerading as a swamp.

A soon-to-be treacherous boreen

As the hedgerows closed in around us and the surface of the track got muddier and muddier, it seemed inevitable that we were going to get bogged (not long after the photograph above was taken the road conditions deteriorated drastically). But Mr Reading Matters, who was driving, held his nerve and pushed on through (I kept my eyes closed). And then, just when we least expected it, we turned a corner where there was a quiet stretch of tarmac waiting to meet us. The sense of relief was enormous.

We never did find that farmhouse.

McGahern landmarks

But we did find plenty of other landmarks associated with McGahern. Here are some of them:

The plaque that commemorates his last novel

This plaque on the footpath in Ballinamore commemorates McGahern’s last novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, which was first published in 2001. It sits at the foot of a memorial bench (see the photograph at the top of this post).

The abbey that stars in McGahern’s last novel

Fenagh Abbey, in Fenagh, was built on the site of a 6th-century monastery founded by St Caillin. It sits atop a hillside overlooking the local village and surrounding landscape. In That They May Face the Rising Sun, this is the graveyard where the character Johnny Murphy is buried.

The garda barracks that stars in his debut novel

The barracks in Cootehall, just over the border in Co. Roscommon, where McGahern’s father, a garda sergeant, was based and where the family, including John, lived after the death of his mother. This is also the basis for the barracks in McGahern’s debut novel of the same name.

McGahern is buried alongside his mother

This is McGahern’s plain but dignified grave. He is buried alongside his mother, who died of breast cancer when he was 10 years old, in the grounds of St Patrick’s church, Aughawillan. The inscription on the cross reads:

Susan McManus McGahern, NT
2 May 1902 – 28 June 1944

John McGahern
12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006

Find out more

Please excuse the poor quality of the photographs in this post. They were originally taken on a digital camera (not a smartphone) in 2011 and have been “rescued” from the Internet Archive website Wayback Machine because I no longer hold the originals.

I wrote this post for Cathy’s #ReadingIrelandMonth24. You can find out more about this annual blog event at Cathy’s blog 746 Books.

Published by kimbofo

I am a book obsessive who has been charting my reading life online since the early 2000s.

37 thoughts on “Remembering John McGahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)”

  1. I just re-read my review of The Barracks, which you gave me when we met up in London and I read it on the long train journey from Bilbao to Salamanca. I think he was a wonderful writer and I really enjoyed your adventures on his literary trail. 

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        1. Ah, that makes sense. I have such mixed memories of 2010… the magazine I edited at the time was put up for sale and job security was at risk. I ended up taking workplace redundancy in October that year, a blessed relief after 6+ months of anxiety and stress. That’s when I went travelling to China 🇨🇳 and spent 6 weeks with my parents in Koonwarra.

          Thanks for the link to your post. Lovely to see the pic! I look so young 😆

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      1. Yes, that’s right. And we met again when we were on our way to the Netherlands in 2015 along with Jonathan from Intermittencies of the Mind. Stu from Winston’s Dad was going to come too, but at the last minute couldn’t make it, such a shame, I feel as if I know him so well and it would have been nice to meet.

        Here we are having lunch at the pub: https://hillfamilysoutherndivision.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/a-day-for-family-and-friends-june-3rd-2015/

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        1. So wonderful to know that, Lisa 😊 Loved this picture! Thanks for sharing. So this is the famous Jonathan? 😊 I always think of him as a boy smoking a cigarette with a Henry Miller book in hand 😄 Atleast that is how his profile image looks like. He looks very serious and distinguished in person. Not at all like the boy who is smoking 😄

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  2. A wonderful tribute and quite a pilgrimage, especially the hair raising narrow track diversion, so many roads like thus to get lost down.

    I did read The Barracks some years ago, I recall learning that his work was read in schools in Ireland, a name known in Ireland though not so much elsewhere.

    I think I have Amongst Women on my shelf and a memoir, I must dust the off!

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    1. Thanks Claire. The Barracks is such a beautiful, heartfelt book. Its good to hear his work is read in schools in Ireland because two of his novels were banned upon publication and he was forced into self-imposed exile after he was sacked as a school teacher (because he’d married a foreigner outside of his religion). Do read Amongst Women… it’s short but powerful and shows how clinging onto old ideals and past hurts stifles personal growth… a metaphor, I suspect, for Ireland clinging to the Church (before the Celtic Tiger etc)

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  5. Hi Kim, you introduced me to Johb McGahern through your blog many years ago and he is also one of my favourite writers now. You may be interested to know that That They May Face the Rising Sun has been made into a film and I think is available on Curzon from the end of March.

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    1. Oh, I’m so pleased I introduced you to him Alison, he’s too good not to share! Someone else told me about the film adaptation but not sure I could bring myself to watch it; I’d be scared it would not live up to my fond memories of the book.

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    1. You’re welcome. This post is essentially 13 years old but thank goodness for being able to rescue my pics from the Wayback Machine. I had the words in a file which I’d downloaded before killing off my old Typepad blog in 2014, but I thought the pics were lost forever.

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  8. A lovely tribute post, Kim. He’s one of my favourite writers, too. He had such a tough early life but I felt That They May Face the Rising Sun was the work of a man who had found his way through all that pain. I hope that’s true.

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    1. I think he was a resilient man, but I’ve heard he could be a prickly character in real life. Colm Tóibín wrote a wonderful essay about him in his collection A Guest at the Feast.

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  12. Pingback: Reading Ireland Month 2024 is here!

  13. It looks like a lovely trip. I can’t think of any author I like enough to follow up like that. Not even Miles Franklin – I’ve driven from Sydney to Melbourne (by car) via Cooma without even making small detours to the places she grew up on and described in her fiction.

    I’ve been to Charmian Clift’s house on Hydra and Henry Handel Richardson’s mothers’ post office in Maldon and that’s it.

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    1. I can’t say there’d be any Australian authors I’d want to follow in this way, mainly because the ones I read/admire are all about my vintage or a decade older. But in the UK, I did track down numerous blue plaques for long dead literary figures, (Somerset Maugham, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Charlotte Bronte, Nancy Mitford et al) and I often explored “Graham Greene country”, a 30 minute train ride away in Berkhampsted, more for the beautiful canalside walk and pubs than the literary history, it must be said, although I am a fan of Greene’s work.

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  14. The closest I’ve come to this kind of literary pilgrimage is with Jane Austen. I’ve only been to the UK twice but both trips included some JA haunts. Loved seeing your pics of Ireland though, a place I have yet to visit at all.

    I have a copy of The Art of a Glimpse, 100 Irish short stories and I believe that there is a John McGahern in the mix, so I will certainly get to at least that one, one day!

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    1. I’m not really familiar with McGahern’s short stories, but I do have a collection here I will dip into at some point. Art of the Glimpse was edited by my mate Sinead Gleeson, I think? She has a book coming out later this year, which I am looking forward to.

      As I said to Bill (above), the only other pilgrimage of this nature I have made is regular trips to Berkhampsted, a short train journey away from where I lived in London, to stroll the haunts of Graham Greene, but mainly just to walk along the pretty canal and explore the various pubs that line it.

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