The Review of Contemporary Fiction
By the Lake by John McGahernDavid W. Madden
John McGahern. By the Lake. Knopf, 2002. 336 pp. $24.00.
By the Lake, John McGahern’s sixth novel and his first in twelve years, marks a significant departure in his career. His early novels—The Dark and The Barracks—are brooding, violent books that emphasize the ambushes of family life and the vulnerability of children. McGahern’s fathers are invariably controlling, dominating figures who demand obeisance from wives and children; however, this novel reverses that trend by concentrating on a middle-aged couple who enjoy a harmonious relationship. Joe and Kate Ruttledge buy a farm near a lake in what is presumably County Leitrim, Ireland, after successful careers in advertising in London. The exact reasons for their relocation, as with so many other details in this mysterious novel, remain off the page. In this nearly plotless narrative, the focus remains on the couple and their relationships with the locals, a collection of richly developed individuals who represent a diverse cross-section of rural Irish life. Punctuating the social interactions in a year’s span is the lake itself, a symbol of permanence amid change. While the majority of the community resides in the town, the few inhabitants of the lake arrange their lives around the rhythms of natural life—storms, calves’ births, lambs dying, and constant walks about the water’s edge. The prose is so smooth and evenly paced that it suggests the imperturbable centrality of nature in these lives, and given an Ireland that is economically flourishing from its incorporation into the European Union, the novel stands as a reminder of an Ireland that is too-quickly fading from view. While each of the characters struggles silently with pain and remorse, the book wrestles with some of life’s eternal mysteries—what is happiness, how can one know it, is it definable? By the Lake is a rare novel—hypnotic, profound, and deliciously nuanced. [David W. Madden]