By the Lake (McGahern) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
This stately novel by one of Ireland's foremost writers is, as its title suggests, primarily about the rhythms and cadences of place. The story is an old one: in search of a quieter way of life, Joe and Kate Ruttledge have traded their careers in London for a farm near a small Irish village, where they learn how to raise sheep and are steadily drawn into the lives of their neighbors. There's the Shah, a rich bachelor in search of an heir for his business; John Quinn, a weaselly sexual predator, and a danger to women throughout the county; and Jimmy Joe McKiernan, an I.R.A. leader whose exploits periodically stir up high feeling. McGahern is never sentimental, and the novel's greatest pleasures come from the unflinching probity of his observations: he writes as crisply about the parsimony of a neighbor or sending lambs to be slaughtered as he does about the notion that happiness "should be allowed its own slow pace so that it passes unnoticed, if it ever comes at all."
The New Yorker


McGahern expertly captures the rhythms of smalltown Irish life in a graceful but underplotted novel that takes a diverse and gregarious cast of local characters through a transitional period in a lakeside village. Much of the narrative revolves around the daily life of the Ruttledges, a farming couple who become the focal point of the village's social interaction after they leave the London rat race for a more peaceful life. The most engaging and colorful characters in the book are John Quinn, a local womanizer whose life becomes a source of gossip and controversy when his bride leaves him right after the wedding, and a figurehead known as "the Shah," the richest man in the village, whose decision to sell his business represents a turning point in the town's way of life. Lurking in the background is a shadier political figure, Jimmy Joe McKiernan, whose involvement with the IRA poses a different kind of threat to the rhythms of daily life whenever a bout of upheaval and violence erupts. McGahern gets plenty of mileage from the poignant scenes describing the rituals and chores of farming along with the common social affairs that form the backbone of daily life, but the absence of a strong story line reduces this book to an extended character study. The author's warm, flowing prose makes that study an enjoyable read, but readers who pick this up based on McGahern's track record for well-reviewed and award-winning novels may find themselves disappointed.
Publishers Weekly


Just as one of the characters in this novel walks into his neighbor's house and joins in an ongoing conversation, so the reader enters the lives of these people, who live near a lake in northwestern Ireland. McGahern presents Joe Ruttledge and his wife, Kate, who have moved from London to this rural area and interact on a daily basis with neighbors Jamesie Murphy and his wife, Mary. Also in the picture are Bill Evans, an oddball old-timer; John Quinn, who has marital and sexual problems; and Patrick Ryan, a neighborhood fix-it man who is supposed to be building a new shed on the Ruttledge's property. During the course of a year, a wedding and a funeral take place, along with events such as the cutting and tedding of hay and the livestock auction on Monaghan Day. Though the book is timeless and remote in setting, the political and social forces of Ireland's turbulent history do intrude occasionally. This is not a plot-driven page-turner, as McGahern, a highly regarded Irish author of novels and stories (e.g., Amongst Women), chooses to accentuate the small talk and daily routines of his characters. The novel gathers force as the personalities and customs of rural life ring true and move according to their own rhythms. Recommended for academic and larger public library fiction collections. —Jim Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal


An episodic and subtly elegiac group portrait of life in a contemporary Irish village: the sixth, and best, novel—and first in 12 years—from veteran author McGahern. Originally published in Great Britain as That They May Face the Rising Sun, it focuses on Joe and Kate Ruttledge, a former London couple who live modestly by working their small lakeside farm—and, with gradually increasing clarity and intensity, on the friends and neighbors whose intermittently shared lives become all but inseparable. McGahern introduces his characters in the most natural way imaginable—as casual visitors who drop in for a drink and a chat, and as subjects of stories they all tell about one another. Joe's uncle, the wealthy businessman nicknamed "the Shah," who conceals his lonely vulnerability beneath a veneer of brisk efficiency; neighbor Jamesie, a compulsive taleteller and gossip and his quiet wife Mary; aging pensioner Bill Evans, still traumatized by physical abuse he suffered in boyhood at the hands of wrathful priests; contractor Patrick Ryan, who never finishes anything he starts—professionally or personally; a genial Don Juan, John Quinn, who keeps finding propertied widows to marry: all become part of the comforting (and smothering) fabric that sustains the Ruttledges "by the lake," impervious to the siren call of more lucrative employment in London. Very little happens, apart from Quinn's incessant amours. Jamesie's rootless brother Johnny, an annual visitor, may come "home" to stay; but the threat passes. The Shah retires, and his longtime employee manages (with Joe's aid) to buy his business. Hints of more earthshaking occurrences follow the arrival of an otherwise typical spring, as local IRA leader Jimmy Joe McKiernan leads an "Easter March" through the hamlet that had thought itself immune to such "troubles." McGahern's luminous threnody to the particulars and permutations of aging and change is captured in prose of the utmost simplicity and precision, keenly alert to the rhythms of lives lived close to the bone and in quiet harmony with the natural world.
Kirkus Reviews