Product Description
John McGahern's second novel, The Dark, confirmed and enhanced the reputation he gained with his first, The Barracks. The scene is set in rural Ireland and the central theme is adolescence, impelled forward by ambition and sexuality, guilty and uncontrollable, contorted and twisted by a puritanical and passionate religion and, above all, by a strange, powerful, ambiguous relationship between son and widower father. Against a background evoked with quiet, undemonstrative mastery, McGahern explores with precision and tenderness a situation superficially very ordinary but inwardly an agony of longing and despair.
Controversial in its day , it remainsa keenly observed insight into a young boy's relationship with his own life, his sexuality and his widoweed father. Precise and tender, the novel that established mcGahern on the world stage as a novelist of note.
This edition is the first paperback edition, Quatro UK. Some indented bumps to the cover. Internally unmarked.