John McGahern – Memoir

28 mars 2007

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Jean Pierre

Agrandir

Imprimer

John McGahern – Memoir

Faber and Faber – 2005 - 272 pages

John McGahern is a talented Irish novelist whose qualities have already been illustrated in many of his books. In his Memoir, he demonstrates the same talent for telling stories, but this time it is his story, his own life story and his family’s. The story of himself, his four sisters and his brother, the burden of their distress at the time of their mother’s death after suffering from cancer, when they were all so young. It is the most emotional moment in the book. The constant reference for all that happened before and after this turning point in the family’s history. This gives a special hint of melancholy to the book, full of tenderness and loving memory.

When reading this Memoir, so much seems to be familiar. Actually, so much has been alluded to McGahern’s previous books. He has fed his novels with his own life. For instance, in his first novel, “The Barracks”, he described routine life in a garda station. His father was a guard and after their mother’s death, they went to live in the barracks where he was stationed. No wonder McGahern had inside knowledge about how such a place could be run.

In another of his novels, “The Leavetaking”, McGahern tells the story of a young teacher fired from his school after having taken a years leave and having married a divorced American woman. Not at all according to the ways of the Church. McGahern had almost the same experience. He took a sabbatical year and married a Finnish woman in a registry office, without church wedding. When he returned to his Catholic school, he was refused more work as a teacher. In the meantime he had published “The Dark”, released in London and banned in Ireland. He became very critical of the Church’s interference with State policy and like so many Irish talents he went abroad to pursue a decent career.

Later he came back to Ireland, and after staying near Clifden he settled on a small farm in Co. Leitrim where he grew up. The landscape was his, tiny fields, high hedges, calm lakes and narrow lanes with wild flowers that his mother liked to name on the way to school. A quiet life among decent people, the like that can be found in “That They May Face the Rising Sun”, his latest novel. The easiest story to imagine is ones own life.