Not very much happens in John McGahern’s “That They May Face the Rising Sun” – but don’t let that put you off! The novel paints a considered and in-depth picture of slow, rural Irish life which, even though the scale of it is quite narrow, still manages to touch on the universal.
If I had to be picky however, I confess I was initially put off by the rush to introduce so many characters in the first few pages; I got a little lost in the confusion, and given how the rest of the story is told, on reflection this feels out of kilter. I was also surprised by multiple examples of the clumsy repetition of the same word in close succession e.g. one very short paragraph near the end where ‘car’ is repeated at least three times and ‘parking’ twice. And whenever the main characters walk round the lake, the heron always seems to rise out of the weeds – and be described in exactly the same way. In places it feels as if McGahern didn’t finishing the editing…
But these are minor points really. I am a fan of McGahern’s work, and this book was the last he completed before his death.
Ian Gouge - Writer 