He took the heavy leather strap he used for sharpening his razor from its nail on the side of the press. And trying to sing dumb – as if butter wouldn’t melt. You’d think there’d be some respect for your dead mother left in the house. And I’m going to teach you a lesson for once. “The filth that’s in your head came out, you mean. Now do you think you can bluff your way out of it?”
“F-U-C-K is what you said, isn’t it? That profane and ugly word. As a reader, I’m rarely much interested in praise that a book is ‘page-turning’, but I really do defy anyone to read the first page of The Dark and not want to rush on. The Dark (1965) was McGahern’s second novel and, true to the title, it’s as black as you like, at least to begin with. A perverse form of logic made me interpret this as meaning that his other books were not worth reading, and could only lead to disappointment. A tremendous book, it made me read around his other work, from which I learned that Amongst Women was, apparently, his best by some way. I thought this a couple of years ago when I read John McGahern’s Amongst Women.
Every now and then you come across an author who makes you stop and think, here is someone who will keep me company for a long time to come.
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