By the Lake (or: That They May Face the Rising Sun) – by John McGahern

John McGahern will probably be most remembered for Amongst Women, a novel that ranks with one of the best books I have ever read. He died last year (here’s what I wrote about him then), and his last novel is called (at least in the States) By the Lake.

The rhythm of it is slow, pre-modern almost. There’s a mention of a television in one scene, and I felt a jolt, having forgotten about the existence of television for a bit while reading it.

McGahern was always known as a rural writer. His landscape was rural Ireland, and the quiet lives lived there. Quiet, but intense. There is no real story in By the Lake, no plot, no big finishes, no climactic moments. It is the story of a group of people in a town in Ireland, who live around a lake. They are mostly in their 50s, 60s, approaching retirement, although “retirement” has no meaning if you’re running a small farm. It’s a rural community, many of the folks are primarily farmers but the modern world impinges. Some of them have freelance writing jobs, and have to fly to London for interviews. All of them have children who have moved on, who live in cities elsewhere. We meet them, we gossip with them, we watch the seasons change. It’s a slow story (with sudden searing moments of realization), it’s a slow stroll around the shores of the lake through summer, fall, winter, spring.

Things happen.

John Quinn gets married. His wife leaves him after one day.

The Shah (a fascinating character – excerpt here) decides to finally sell his very successful business to his silent partner, Frank Dolan. A sign that perhaps mortality approaches. Everyone wonders how the Shah will feel when he is not in charge.

Jimmy Joe McKiernan is the resident political in the town. He did time in Long Kesh, was on hunger strike. He passes out copies of An Phoblacht to townsfolk. He owns a bar, and two detectives sit outside it all day, every day. Just in case.

The violence of the North seems so far removed from the simple quiet life lived on these farms, and Ruttledge – the main character, if there has to be a main character – does not approve of violence, and does not approve of the IRA’s aims of the IRA, the Provisionals or anyone else. In another book there would be perhaps a confrontation, a big one, between these two different Irelands. The ones in the South who think, “Look, the North has to work out their own problems … leave us out of it.” And the ones in the South who think, “As long as our brethren up there are not free, then none of us are free.” These are two very real currents in Irish life, and it’s brushed upon in the book – but gently, easily … as just another piece of the picture. It’s not the main event. It may be the main event to Jimmy Joe McKiernan, but not to Ruttledge. When the two men find themselves alone together near the end of the book, their conversation, as rendered by McGahern, is a masterpiece. I wish I could write that well.

Other things happen.

Jamesie, the town gossip, and his wife Mary – worry about Jamesie’s aimless brother Johnny, who has moved to London and appears to have become a bum. They get so nervous on his visits home they barely enjoy seeing him. Patrick Ryan, the sleek almost malevolent handyman, travels around the country, job to job, leaving his farm at home to go to rot. He offers to help build a shed for Ruttledge, and it has stood half-unfinished for a year now, maybe more. They keep saying they’re going to get to it.

Details: you get to know the rhythms of the auctions, how the cattle is sold, the competition between neighbors in regards to their livestock, how contemptuous the dealers are when they realize Jamesie’s sheep have not just been raised for slaughter, but pampered and loved. It makes their job harder if the sheep have expectations of KINDNESS. “Fuckin’ pets,” growl the dealers.

I knew going into the book that it was plot-less. My dad raved about it to me, he’s a huge McGahern fan. McGahern spent most of his life, as a writer, very little known outside of his native country, although he’s a huge favorite there. (This was not always the case. His second novel caused such an uproar it was banned in Ireland and McGahern was fired from his teaching job.) Amongst Women was an international success and By the Lake was as well. He began to be known on a wider scale just at the end of his life. Here’s a post I wrote about him – with some good links, and good excerpts from other people about him.

Since I knew going in not to expect any big plot or story, I didn’t spend the book waiting for something to happen. Get into the time-span of these people. Leave your own. I love it that Jamesie and Mary’s house is filled with clocks all telling the wrong time, always bonging out the time at the incorrect hour. At the end of the book, after they have suffered a grievous loss, they get the clocks fixed. There’s a marvelous scene with a clockmaker, a guy on crutches, who sounds like he might have cerebral palsy or something similar (it’s not named), who takes great pride in his work, in a gentle specific way, recognizes that Jamesie and Mary’s clocks are antiques, works of art. He promises them he will get them in sync. Jamesie, Mary, Ruttledge and Kate sit in the kitchen and listen, quietly, as all the clocks go off at the same time. Because of how McGahern has set up this world, slowly, patiently, he has slowed US down – as audience members … and so the clocks going off – in sync at last – is a truly profound moment.

By the Lake was originally published in Great Britain with the name That They May Face the Rising Sun. If you had to choose between the two titles … no contest. By the Lake could be anything. By the Lake describes the setting of the book. That They May Face the Rising Sun is majestic and poetic, speaking to the book’s universal truths. It cuts deep into the heart of what McGahern was writing about, and the title’s resonance and meaning doesn’t become clear until the last 30 pages. McGahern makes you wait. It comes out in one sentence. Just one sentence, spoken over a grave, freshly dug by Patrick Ryan. “That they may face the rising sun.”

I understand titles are often changed, for different audiences and sensibilities. It makes sense, I don’t have an opinion about it one way or the other. But in this particular case, I hope the American publishers will not mind if I join the readers across the pond, and call it That They May Face the Rising Sun. After pages and pages of farming and carpentry and glasses of whiskey after Mass and time passing and things happening or not happening … life is passing, life is passing, that is all … after all of that: Resurrection.

Because the rest of the book is so down to earth (and isn’t so much of our lives down to earth? We do laundry, we have drinks with friends, we shovel snow), so prosaic and realistic, a sudden vision of transcendence slices right through you. It’s like the ending of Our Town when Emily realizes her life is over, and it is only then that she can really love it.

I will miss reading this book. My life has been intense this past month, with outside events and crises. I feel ragged, forgetful, am prone to crying jags, and have started oversleeping (a truly bizarre development, which can only be attributed to anxiety). With all of that going on, I have loved visiting That They May Face the Rising Sun every day, even in its saddest moments. I have loved slowing down to match the pace of that world John McGahern so beautifully described.