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Article: Green horizons; New Irish fiction.(New fiction from John McGahern)('That They May Face the Rising Sun')
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- January 12, 2002
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WRITTEN in a minor key, John McGahern's new novel, his first for 12 years, is an elegiac hymn to a timeless rural Ireland that has all but disappeared. His central characters, Joe and Kate Ruttledge, have returned from sophisticated careers in London to their roots in a farming community beside a lake. Now in late middle age, they attempt, like Levin in "Anna Karenina", to recapture the sense of primal identification with the landscape that comes so naturally to those who have never been away.
Chief among these is Jamesie, who is so in tune with nature that he hears the first cuckoo before anyone else. The downside of his appealing gentleness is a sort of moral ...