The Collected Stories [Paperback]

John McGahern (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1994

These 34 funny, tragic, bracing, and acerbic stories represent the complete short fiction of one of Ireland's finest living writers. On struggling farms, in Dublin's rain-drenched streets, or in parched exile in Franco's Spain, McGahern's characters wage a confused but touching war against the facts of life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McGahern is best known for his grim novels of Irish life, and readers of The Barracks, The Leavetaking and The Pornographer will immediately recognize his deft handiwork in these 35 stories. Operating fully within his country's vaunted short-story tradition (Frank O'Connor, Mary Lavin, et al.), McGahern meticulously builds prolonged moments of stasis, wherein accumulations of character and detail do not advance a story as much as deepen its roots. In the extraordinary "Swallows," the stultifying Irish country life is brightened for a moment by a Dublin traveler who plays Paganini on a Stradivarius, only to find his hosts asking for a bit of "Danny Boy." "Doorways," a tale of unrequited love, is formally and thematically framed by the presence of Beckettian vagabonds who offer wry but silent commentary. Although McGahern returns again and again to the same themes--emotional repression, poverty of mind and spirit, the ever-salubrious effects of stout and whiskey--he does so with an impressive and sometimes surprising range of characters (a gay fondler in "Lavin," a vulnerable translator of Chekhov and Mayakovsky in "The Beginning of an Idea"). In the end, what distinguishes McGahern's work is not his cold assessment of life in Ireland, but his ability to fan dying embers into temporary glow.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Set mostly in Dublin and rural Ireland, McGahern's complex and thoughtful stories concern missed opportunities, lost loves, and an inability to communicate. "Like All Other Men" concerns a man who left the priesthood only to fall in love with a woman who is becoming a nun. In "Korea," a young man is shocked by his father's plans for him to go to America, where he would be drafted and his father would profit by his death. In a series of stories, the narrator has left his father's farm for an education and life in Dublin, which his father will never forgive. Master storyteller McGahern ( Amongst Women, LJ 8/90) evokes place and feeling with lyrical prose that imbues his stories with a sweet melancholy. Full of insight into the essential aloneness of man, these stories are to be read slowly, savoring each perfectly chosen word. Highly recommended.
- Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679744010
• ISBN-13: 978-0679744016
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #352,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Master, March 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Collected Stories (Paperback)

For anyone that reads, McGahern is an essential reading companion. He speaks for the man in Dublin, single running into middle age, or brimming it, and whose heart is a flutter for a nurse too far, or a far field where a father is dying into a landscape that nobody wants, that nobody values. McGahern maps the difficult transition of Ireland from a largely rural perspective, and then from the rural to urban. A sef confessed Joyce freak, McGahern has tried to emulate Portrait, and Dubliners in his own way. The rain will fall very gently on this mans tombstone.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BLEAK, BLEAK..., August 11, 2003

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Collected Stories (Paperback)

McGahern writes beautifully, and he obviously has a keen eye - his portraits of the various Irish men and women who populate these stories are well-drawn, and he evokes not only the speech but the total experience of the Irish very well. If only these stories weren't - at least for the most part - so bleak, I could personally enjoy them much more. There's humor to be found within this volume, for sure - but for the most part I found hopelessness and resignation and emptiness and pathos. Far too many of these tales - for my taste - involved people who were living in doubt: doubt about their lives, their loves, their faith, their very place in life, the very land in which they dwell. Doubt is not necessarily a bad thing - it calls us (hopefully) to reassess our beliefs and values, so that we may, when needed, reorder our lives. The doubt that has entered the lives of these characters, however, seems to cover them like a blanket - and rather than struggle with it, they seem to welcome its false warmth, pulling it more tightly about their shoulders.

The stories take place in an Ireland in flux - torn between its spirited yet peaceful, more agrarian past, and the `new' world that encompasses industry and the so-called luxuries of modern life. It's a change that has obviously ripped the very heart and soul out of many of these characters - even the ones whose stories are clearly taking place, more or less, in the present. They inwardly and silently bemoan their state, yet they do nothing about it - and many of them use this dissatisfaction to justify the shallowness and dishonesty of the lives they lead.

All that being said, I did find a good deal of fine reading in this collection - especially the stories `The wine breath' and `Swallows'. For me, these two stand head and shoulders above the rest - but different ones will no doubt appeal to different readers. McGahern's writing is clear and powerful - I certainly wouldn't recommend any reader passing him by. At the same time, I don't think I'd put him on a level with the short stories of James Joyce. For modern Irish stories, I'll take the work of William Trevor any time.

I have McGahern's novel BY THE LAKE - I've read many good things about it, and I look forward very much to reading it. Some things I've read about another novel of his, THE DARK, are intriguing as well.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest collections in English, October 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Collected Stories (Hardcover)

This career-spanning collection deserves to stand on a short list that might include Dubliners, the collected stories of Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, K. Mansfield, Malamud (and you may as well include Maupassant, Chekhov, Babel, and Tolstoy on that list). The understated magnificence of these stories raises them to the level of high art. Read these now.