Product Description

The Dark, John McGahern-s second novel, is set in rural Ireland. The themes - that McGahern has made his own - are adolescence and a guilty, yet uncontrollable sexuality that is contorted and twisted by both a puritanical state religion and a strange, powerful and ambiguous relationship between son and widower father.Against a background evoked with quiet, undemonstrative mastery, McGahern explores with precision and tenderness a human situation, superficially very ordinary, but inwardly an agony of longing and despair.-It creates a small world indelibly and without recourse to deliberate heightening effects of prose. There are few writers whose work can be anticipated with such confidence and excitement.- Sunday Times-One of the greatest writers of our era.- Hilary Mantel, New Statesman

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71965 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780140277951
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Customer Reviews

Excellent little novel.
John McGahern, The Dark (Panther, 1965)

John McGahern would seem to be another of those authors whose talent is lionized in his native land, but who never quite had Americans get the hang of his work (q.v. Margaret Laurence). The Dark, McGahern's second novel, is a fascinating portrait of adolescence that deserves far, far wider appreciation than it seems to have ever received.

McGahern's homeland of Ireland may have something to do with that. The Dark was banned not long after its release for its rather cavalier treatments of both sex and religion, and so a novel published almost forty years ago has actually had something less than that to make a name for itself. Someday, Oprah will discover this book and feature it in her book club, and well, McGahern will have it made.

Oprah couldn't not love this book. It's dysfunction central. The home depicted here won't be found in the bucolic emerald landscapes on sees in movies of the time. Here, we have the poor Depression-era Ireland, where the family burns peat and straw because it can't afford coal, instead. The nameless protagonist's mother is dead, presumably in childbirth. The father is both verbally and sexually abusive to his (uncounted, in the novel) children; explicitly to his son, implicitly to his daughters (though whether there is anything to this forms the crux of a scene much later on in the novel). There is much here to lay the groundwork for the main character of this novel to hate his father, but McGahern isn't going to take the easy way out, building a complex love/hate relationship between the main character and his father, complicated by both their feelings for Joan, the oldest daughter.

The book has rightly been compared to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, though McGahern's prose is far clearer and less florid, almost minimal. His characters are beautifully drawn, real in every sense of the word, and it is impossible not to at least empathize with them. McGahern takes on the daunting task of telling a story with one main character and many different points of view, while keeping all those points of view sympathetic, as if he were telling the story from everyone's perspectives simultaneously. He pulls it off with great flair.

This is an uncomfortable book, to be sure, but it is a very good one, perhaps even a great one. Certainly one of the finer coming-of-age novels I've run across. ****

A wonderfully haunting novel
A poetically written story of a boy's coming of age in rural Ireland, "The Dark" is a journey through teenage years full of self doubt, sexual frustration and religious fear. The protagonist, whose name we're never actually told, is an intelligent boy who excels academically, though he doubts and fears his own future. He wonders if he should become a priest, go to the university to be a scientist, join the civil service or end up a potato farmer like his father. Through the years of indecision and study, the boy endures his widowed father's physical and verbal abuse. But as he grows older and learns more about the truth of the world, the past, present and future take on new perspectives and his relationship with his father changes from one of fear and hate to a subdued respect and love.

"The Dark" is lusciously written with a poetic grace hard to find in most contemporary novels. McGahern gently pulls the reader in, not only to the boy's psychological world, but also into the physical: the rural Irish landscape, the dark fearful Catholic confessional box and the squalid Irish farmhouse dominated by an abusive father. McGahern pulls you in, but does not need to hold you there; you'll stay of your own free will in this simultaneously simple and complex world, and find yourself haunted by it after you leave.

Both disturbing and beautiful
This novel was brought to my attention by the Guardian Unlimited in an article about banned books. I assumed it must be a good read, and I wasn't disappointed. My only cause for surprise is that it doesn't seem to be very well-known, that I am the second person to write a review.

My own transition from adolescence to adulthood was far from smooth, so I enjoy reading coming-of-age stories because I can relate to them on a very emotional level, and this novel is one of the most realistic to date, for many reasons, including sexual self-experimentation (as a Catholic, the main character is plagued with guilt), self-doubt, the confusion and fear, and so abundantly on.

But what makes this story all that and much more are the intense thoughts and ideas of this intelligent young man. The more he emotes, the more I also felt. He struggles with age-old philosophical questions and through introspection decides whether to become a priest. I highlighted some brilliant quotes about life and death in my copy. I could relate to his "dog's chance" of succeeding as a result of an unsupportive father, with whom he has a love-hate relationship. A perfectly able young man hobbled by a household of fear, anger, and constant complaining....

McGahern's literary style of switching among different points of view, as well as alternating between past and present tenses, truly sets the appropriate mood, and it's pure genius. This novel is timely considering the sex-abuse scandals in the Church. Although it feels as if the story ends abruptly, and somewhat anti-climactic, leaving the reader wanting for more, I like to think that it signifies a good book. I wish more authors would write true-to-life stories like this one.