That They May Face the Rising Sun

by John McGahern

Paperback, 2003

Status

Available

Call number

813

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Faber and Faber (2003), Edition: New edition, 320 pages

Description

From the very opening pages, we see many memorable characters as they move about the Ruttledges, who have come from London home to Ireland in search of a different life. There is John Quinn, who will stop at nothing to ensure a flow of women; Johnny, who left for England twenty years before in pursuit of love; and Jimmy Joe McKiernan, head of the IRA, both auctioneer and undertaker. The gentle Jamesie and his wife Mary embody the spirit of the place. They have never left the lake but know everything that ever stirred or moved there. The drama of a year in the lives of these and many other characters unfolds through the action, the rituals of work, religious observances and play. With deceptive simplicity, by the novel's close we feel that we have been introduced to a complete representation of existence. An enclosed world has been transformed into an Everywhere.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Kristelh

This was a most delightful read. Not a story with a plot but a story of life, seasons passing, the years cycle frames their lives. The book is set in rural part of Ireland and is a portrait of a life in a rural lakeside community. It's the author's own place, sparsely populated corner of County

Leitrim. Nothing much really happens yet it is full; haymaking, lambing, Monaghan Day, a wake. The story has repeating episodes of food, drink, the grey heron, swans, black cat and dogs. The Lake is one of the book's greatest character. This is a comfortable read and has less violence that Amongst Women but it is still there on the edge with John and the IRA man. A beautiful story set sometime after the war and modernization just starting to show up in the rural community with the telephone poles.

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LibraryThing member LunaRampage

This is a slow book, and as others have pointed out, doesn't really have a plot. Instead, it's a year long peek into a small Irish village and what life is like for the people who live there. Reading this novel made me wish that daily life wasn't so hectic and I wanted to pack my bags, move to

Ireland, and live on a farm and raise sheep.

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LibraryThing member wyvernfriend

Got it for Christmas and it was okay, I wasn't as taken with it as a lot of people I know were.

LibraryThing member John

That They May Face the Rising Sun is a fine novel. McGahern has a wonderful ability to represent life in all its myriad forms and relationships on a small, representative canvas. The rhythm is slow and steady as the seasons roll by and people's lives evolve. There are no earthshaking moments:

although set in Ireland, there is only a hint of the sectarian violence that exists, but does not really intrude upon the village life described here. There is a wonderful gallery of colourful characters who represent a wide range of emotions and relationships, as friends, as partners, as colleagues, as acquaintances. As one of the characters in the novel says, I have never traveled much, but I do know the world. Recommended reading.

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LibraryThing member RSTorney

Reading this book is like sitting in front of a big coal fire, with a mug of hot chocolate and a cat purring on your knee. Bliss

LibraryThing member thinkpinkDana

By the Lake represents the kind of read I typically love, slow paced, rustic, relaxing, deeply influenced by regional setting, and true, the book has all these things, but I still never really enjoyed it as I would have expected. Perhaps the problem, I feel, is that while it is filled with

colorful, odd and rustic characters, there is very little depth to each individual. Each person acts with little insight given to the reader for their motivations. There also seems to be a sense of futility to many of the woven story lines, as though the characters are trapped in their sphere of behavior with no hope of escape or change. This said, I didn't hate the book. It has many good qualities to it, and is a well-drawn portrait of rural friendships and interdependency. There is a delightful sense of diurnal and seasonal rhythms, of the things from nature and community that the farmer can depend on to mark the passage of time year in and year out.

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LibraryThing member Wanderlust_Lost

This book was hard to start. It just plunges into the lives of the characters as if you already know them which I found difficult to get by. But after the first 80 pages or so I felt I knew the characters well enough to grasp the story. I found that the book was about 'nothing' in the sense that

there was no overall 'question' to the book. It goes through a year in the lives of a couple in a small Irish village. I don't normally enjoy books where it's just 'about life' but the book is well written and the characters really grew on me and I found that even though nothing is resolved in the story that I was sad when it was over and the book had touched me.

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LibraryThing member orangewords

Everyone in Celtic studies is always going on and on about how wonderful John McGahern is. I've read two of his novels in prior classes of mine, but never quite understood the draw. Oh, he talks about nature. Yes, his descriptions of animals are lovely.

Now, however, I get it.

McGahren's That They

May Face the Rising Sun is, in a word, beautiful. The novel has a leisurely feel to it; McGahren seems to encourage the reader to linger over the pages, willing him or her to take the time to savor each leaf, cloud and twig. The novel is, therefore, perhaps lacking in a centralizing conflict, but remains all the more beautiful for its expositional and episodic passages. Charming characters, touches of autobiography, and stunning environmental descriptions make this my favorite McGahren book to date.

If you're into language and characters over central plot and conflict, you should definitely read this book.

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LibraryThing member orangewords

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LibraryThing member technodiabla

I read this book for a group read themed "Nature/Living Close to the Land," and it definitely fit that theme well. It is the story of the people who live around a lake in rural Ireland. McGahern's writing evokes a strong sense of place-- though I would not call it "nature writing". Rather, he

depicts how the people and the place are one and how the characters live within the seasons and the scenery.

The story itself is not strong on plot, but the characters are interesting and there's enough tension and happenings to keep the reader's interest. I found the people to be really depressing though. Their society was so limited and so dull that gossip was a significant past-time and hypocrisy rampant. I can't imagine having to tell and re-tell stories from 30 years ago because nothing had happened since then. The tolerance of really bad behaviors was also upsetting. In a small society I guess everyone has to figure out how to live together in peace, but some of the characters were tolerated too much. Depicting these oddities may well have been one of McGahern's goals, but it made it difficult to like the characters very much and limited my enjoyment of the book.

I found the dialect and terminology very amusing, but the dialogue was often hard to follow (who is speaking now?).

I would recommend this book to anyone who can handle low-plot stories and wants to read about a beautiful place and the people who live there.

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LibraryThing member June6Bug

By the Lake depicts the friendship between two middle-aged couples in a remote region of Ireland. One pair moved to the area from London, the other has lived by the lake all their lives, and each couple depends on the other for companionship, news and help with major farming tasks. The stories of

each couple and the people around them unfold in conversation over whiskey and hot tea.

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LibraryThing member bookczuk

I have to admit that I am having great difficulty with this book. It's not that is is poorly written, because the language is eloquent. It's not the pace (which is extremely gentle) bothers me either, because I love how "slow" novels enfold the reader and carry them into the world depicted. The

cast of characters are indeed, characters. Some of the language throws me, as Irish English differs in many ways from American English. (Just check out all the memes on the internet that explore language and you'll see what I mean.)

I think the problem I'm having is a personal one: there is something in this book that is reminding me of a situation that clearly was unhealthy for me, and I disassociated myself from it. To be re-immersed, even in the pages of a novel, to something that was toxic in my life is not wise, so I am putting the book down, unfinished, until I have safely overcome injury. It may be that when the discussion for Stanford Book Salon starts up in a short bit, I'll be able to approach it more clinically and start reading again. Time, which heals all wounds, will tell.

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LibraryThing member oldblack

No. This book did not pass the Nancy Pearl Rule of Fifty - but I am rather old so it didn't involve much reading before I decided that this wasn't sufficiently engaging to keep me going. I was not troubled by a lack of action or slow pace - I love books where nothing much happens. But I do need to

find some special insight into people, relationships, behaviour etc. I was finding this story a bit too much of a narrative of people's lives written from the outside perspective. I was wanting more inside information. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible. It's just that when you get to my age you don't have much reading time left and you can't waste it on something which is only just: "meh". I might come back to it if I'm still alive in ten years time and I've run out of better books. No, I take that back. Good new books are being written at a faster pace than I can read them so there will always be something more attractive on my TBR pile.

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LibraryThing member amerynth

John McGahren's novel "That They May Face the Rising Sun" does a lovely job of evoking a sense of place. The trouble is, that place, rural Ireland where city folks Joe and Kate Ruttledge move set up a farm, is kind of boring. The cast of character that drift in and out of their lives within a

year's time wasn't enough to really hold my interest.

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