Amongst Women

Did you read any great novels recently about a thoroughly decent man A guy who wasn t violent and treated everyone with humanity and tried to look on the bright side No, me neither That is why Ulysses is so great Leopold Bloom is that guy, always trying the cheer up his fellow struggler, always looking on the bright side This is another another story about a patriarch and how his family must dance around him on hot coals fearing the wrath and looking lively whenever he bestoweth his glance Boy d [...]

This is a short, austere and powerful story of a family dominated by a proud and petty tyrant I remember seeing some of a bleak TV adaptation many years ago, which left me doubting whether I would enjoy the book, which I read as part of The Mookse and the Gripes group s latest project to discuss a historic Booker shortlist, this time 1990, which was the year when Possession won the prize.Moran is a widowed veteran of the Irish wars of independence who runs a small farm with his five children The [...]

I thought that this was written superbly neat.Really, this is a good polished book A character study of an aging father okay, like me Then the women thus, the title and of course with Ireland in the 60 s as a setting, the man prays the rosary around him Michael Moran served as a guerrilla in an Ireland War of Independence and he is proud of it Now that this glory days are gone, he is left in his old house with his second wife and his three daughters visit him occasionally His two sons are distan [...]

I m really busy, you guys I ll review both this and Blindness by tomorrow, or latest by the day after, I promise

Don t let them pull wool over your eyes The war was the cold, the wet, standing to your neck in a drain for a whole night with bloodhounds on your trail, not knowing how you could manage the next step towards the end of a long march That was the war not when the band played and a bloody politician stepped forward to put flowers on the ground p.5 It was like grasping water to think how quickly the years had passed here They were nearly gone It was in the nature of things and yet it brought a sens [...]

I hadn t come across this book until I received it as a gift from a friend, but I found it both a poignant and powerful read.Set in rural Ireland over a lengthy period in the mid 20th century, it tells the story of the family of Moran, a man who fought in the War of Independence as the head of a flying column, but was left behind by the bureaucrats once the struggle was won, and who now farms in the west of Ireland.From the earliest point in the narrative, we see that Moran s relationship with h [...]

The central character of this story is central in the way a cloud is central to a storm Michael Moran, father of five and widower remarried, draws people into familial connection through a dark and dangerous and magnetic moodiness His daughters, and even perhaps his far away sons, have become trained to believe that this feeling of separateness and isolation that comes from being a part of a deeply dysfunctional family is actually a form of superiority Moran s youngest son Michael has escaped pe [...]

Really top notch I only say underrated McGahern has won several noteworthy prizes just because I hadn t heard of him and didn t think he d gotten the recognition he deserves this side of the pond.The writing is beautiful humane, poised, distant, appraising, tender, complexly simple, Chekovian, minutely realized, lucid, almost translucent in its knowingness, and the characters are drawn as near to life as you can get They have inwardness McGahern shows, he doesn t tell, and you see them as they f [...]

A short book, but claustrophobic in its persistent domestic dysfunction, its unrelentingly dissatisfied central character, its unsympathetic disdain for chapter breaks Irish Catholic patriarchs are a breed apart, but a specific breed nonetheless my childhood best friend s father was the living manifestation of Moran, at sea in a household of mostly women, who turned to him for direction and a sense of purpose, needing him to feel necessary and connected while at the same time resenting it Moran [...]

Amongst Women by John McGahern is an excellent look at a family s life in rural Ireland in the 1960s McGahern writes a quiet sort of novel and yet he address a number of important themes.Moran is an old Republican whose life was forever transformed by his days of glory as a guerrilla leader in the War of Independence Now in old age, living out in the country, Moran is still fighting but this time with his family, his friends and even himself I find John McGahern s sense of time and place excelle [...]

Many of them who had pensions and medals and jobs later couldn t tell one end of a gun from the other Many of the men who had actually fought got nothing An early grave or the emigrant ship Sometimes I get sick when I see what I fought for So it goes, some men provide the victory and the others use the fruits of the victory The embittered father of the family is a despot and he tries to rule his children with the iron fist, he wants his sons to follow in his footsteps but they run away from desp [...]

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Difficult book in some ways to rate On one hand the father of this bleak and claustrophobic Irish novel was a hypocrite You re supposed to want what s best for your children, to hope that they ll be happy and content, that their needs both emotional and physical are met Didn t appreciate the pivotal character of Michael Moran, he was too damaged to be able to meet any needs but his own One aspect of Moran that I could readily empathise with was his love of the land.This is of a character study [...]

Ireland has produced many fine novelists William Trevor, Brian Moore, Colm Toibin, John Banville, Jennifer Johnston, Maeve Binchy and John Boyne, to name just some And here is another hitherto unknown to me to add to the list John McGahern McGahern died in 2006, having produced 6 novels and 4 short story collections On the evidence of this gem of a book, it is a great shame that he did not write Amongst Women is an excellent novel It is a sort of Tennessee Williams play, transported to rural Ir [...]

This is a wonderfully written account of a family that lives a brittle, tense existence due to a father who feels marginalised, bitter, an outsider The way his unpredictable moodiness which seems almost bi polar infects the house, stressing the women his wife, daughters and breaking his relationships with his sons, treads the same ground that John McGahern s The Dark did with such aplomb in fact I think The Dark is a better book, although there is very little in it.I particularly liked the way t [...]

My Irish Literature tutor at Trinity College a.k.a Hot Scottish Tutor Peter Mackay, who hopefully is not reading this said that this book would have made a better short story than it does a novel While I enjoyed McGahern s simple, unflashy prose, I m inclined to agree The story covers the same ground again and again, and while the monotony of Moran s life may be part of the point, it doesn t make for the most enjoyable read.

The claustrophobia and screwed up family dynamics of this are seriously hard to take, but in a good way Wanted to grab the aforementioned women, shake them hard, and scream RUN AWAY

I read this as part of The Mookse and the Gripes visit to the Booker shortlist from 1990.Amongst Women is a carefully drawn study of local community and an insular family the Morans.There s lots to applaud, and my only reservation is that I don t feel that McGovern brings any deeper or original insight to the realities and dynamics of close knit family life than the great D.H Lawrence did in many of his classic works some seventy years before.There are some memorable descriptions of Michael Mora [...]

A narratively straightforward story about family and understanding guided by emotion Boring I don t think so What I like about this book is that I m able to think back to moments within and fail to see any relevancy toward a specific arched plot It is much like one would look back on their own life and just see events for what they were experiences that just happened and solidified who you were, are, and will be into the future The tragedy, if there is one, is that life moves on and the simple, [...]

The book is well written but a little boring Not too much happens and what does happen is fairly repetitive Probably close to real life At times Moran was hard to like He was definitely head of the house to the point where his children all left home as soon as possible To his credit they did keep coming back.The blurb on the back of the book about being a guerrilla leader and coming to terms with the past is a bit of a red herring It is barely mentioned I hate it when the synopsis on the cover d [...]

This book was a gift from an Irish friend some years ago I only picked it up two weeks ago and started reading it I shouldn t have waited that long, this is a great book.It s not an easy story though a former Irish war hero, Moran, lives in the Irish countryside with his four teenage children one boy and three girls, the oldest son Luke moved away to London after a personal conflict with his father and Rose, his second wife We follow the life of the family how Moran lives alone with the children [...]

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A gritty and realistic look at a man reflecting on his past and dealing poorly with the present The author really focuses on the immediate family and rarely does a scene take place outside of the man s home or town I appreciated the small scope that the author took It lent to the book s gravity and didn t allow the reader to be at ease at any moment, therefore forcing the reader to feel what his family member s were feeling The rarest of lighthearted moments gave you a false sense of security as [...]

Many significant Irish novels published during the 80s and 90s I think, in particular, of Colm Toibin s wonderful The Heather Blazing seem to feature characters and plots that struggle to reconcile the revolutionary ideals of the early twentieth century with the soullessness and disenchantments of some aspects of the new state that finally came into being McGahern s memorable patriarch and former IRA man, Moran, is emblematic of such characters Although rarely likable, Moran is nevertheless a co [...]

After continually seeing this book on Best Irish Novels lists I thought I would give it a go From the blurb, I thought it would be a deep exploration of the subjectivity of the central characters Virginia Woolf style How wrong I was It barely scratches the surface of the characters inner lives and is largely a book that re enacts the same scenario over and over women tiptoeing around the central male figure to appease him with varying degrees of success Boring Oh, and then he dies I was not touc [...]

A little gem of a character study of an Irish family, dominated by the father, Michael Moran, who is known to his grown children and his second wife as Daddy His daughters and wife are at once adoring and afraid of him his sons are less impressed Moran has a very strong sense of his own importance that stems partly from inheritance and partly from his own past glory in the Irish War of Independence However, there s very little about the war The story begins 25 30 years later.It s a deceptively g [...]

I learned about John Macgahern through an article by Colm Toibin on NPR Colm Toibin said of Amongst Women It is the sort of book which you can give anyone of any age and know that they will be changed by it Although it s a tough book to read in that there are no chapters and long paragraphs it is an excellent book Michael Moran is an ex IRA fighter who is the dictator of his own world He in turn charms and terrorizes his family and as harsh as that sounds I found myself admiring him in some ways [...]

Amongst Women 1990 , Irish Times Aer Lingus Literary Award 1991 , GPA Award 1992 , nominated for the Booker Prize 1990.Moran is the father of three daughters and two children He is an embittered Irish Republican soldier Moran marries Rose, his second wife Everyone lives their lives in step with Moran s moods which change quickly without warning Everyone except the one son who leaves before the story begins I enjoyed this novel very much I think the author s best achievement was to describe the a [...]

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A simply wtitten simply beatutiful book about an Irish family complete with the testy, unpredictable and pride driven moods of the in my opinion typical irish father Lovely descriptions a la Thomas Hardy of farm life, but with the complications of family and fathers sons daughters which seem particularly Irish A lovely little book.