By the Lake

The writer who has been called the Irish Chekhov guides readers into a fictional village in rural Ireland and deftly explores its natural rhythms and the inner lives of its inhabitants. The characters in By the Lake include the Ruttledges, who have forsaken the glitter of London to raise sheep and cattle, gossip-mongering Jamesie Murphy, handsome John Quinn - perennially on the lookout for a new wife - as well as the gruff self-made magnate known as "the Shah." Through the course of a year, John McGahern unveils their passions and regrets, their uneasy relationship with the modern world and their ancient intimacy with death. And he creates a novel at once lyrical and slyly comic, earthy, melancholy, and transcendently lovely.