![]() ![]() As his wife says: “He’s a different sort of person altogether behind the walls of his own house.” This Ireland is a prison. In this lost world of terrorists and priests, the menfolk discover their true selves in bitter sectarian violence, but cannot sustain the intimacies of family life. Amongst Women explores the patriarchal faultlines of an Irish society that, since the novel was published, has almost vanished. Moran, a fighter in the civil war of the 1920s, and a fierce former guerrilla commander, is presented as a typically obdurate kind of Irish father. ![]() As so often in Irish life, it is the drumbeat of the past that continues to torment his final days. His wife, Rose, and their three daughters who love and fear their father, now care for him as his health fails and the shadows draw on. This will be the story of an IRA veteran facing up to approaching death at home in the bosom of his family. Its characteristically limpid opening sentence – “As he weakened, Moran became afraid of his daughters” – encapsulates the main theme. Amongst Women, a title derived from the words of the Hail Mary in the Roman Catholic rosary, is McGahern’s masterpiece, uniting all the dominant themes of his work in a single, deeply affecting family drama. ![]()
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