Synopses & Reviews
In his award-winning novels and stories, John McGahern (one of "the greatest Irish writers"
The New York Times Book Review) explores the ordinary lives of men and women to reveal the intricate workings of the human heart and mind. Now, in
All Will Be Well, he turns to his own life, telling the story of his childhood in the Irish countryside and the beginnings of his life as a writer.
McGahern grew up the eldest of seven children in County Leitrim, where North and South meet under the Iron Mountains. His early years were marked by his father's violent nature, the selflessness of his mother a teacher of uncommon independence and the tragedy of her death when McGahern was only nine. With extraordinary poignancy, he describes her and how her love remained a source of strength for him and his siblings, helping them to survive their father's tyrannical rule and, ultimately, enabling them to break free into their own lives.
McGahern traces his career as a writer as it takes him increasingly far from home to Dublin, London, Paris, Helsinki, Spain, the United States before it brings him back to the almost unchanged landscape in which he had grown up and which had indelibly shaped his life and work. His lyrical descriptions of the fields and quiet roads of his home catch the subtle beauty of one of Ireland's least known counties, while his portraits of its inhabitants are drawn with great insight and tenderness. "The people and the language and landscape...were like my breathing."
All Will Be Well is a haunting, illuminating memoir.
Review
"A gloomy memoir of growing up amid harsh conditions in rural Ireland....Occasionally meandering, but possessing a quiet authority and subtle emotional power." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"It's a gracefully understated memoir of McGahern's painful childhood in the early 1940s in County Leitrim, and it tells a bigger story about mothers and fathers and reading and writing and the importance of place." USA Today
Review
"The course of All Will Be Well takes us through the writer's life, almost down to the present. And yet what makes this memoir so moving is its insistence...on the power of the single day that passes before us." Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"One doesn't have to have read McGahern's fiction to admire and be moved by this book." Boston Globe
Review
"A splendidly readable and moving account of [McGahern's] early years....The ultimate triumph of the 'thin clay' of his life...is the ultimate triumph of this book." Seattle Times
Review
"No one should be discouraged from reading All Will Be Well, but any reader should plan to stop at the moment of the mother's death what comes after that is the usual story of a clever boy from the provinces..." Los Angeles Times
Review
"All Will Be Well, McGahern's first memoir, is one of the finest evocations of a writer's childhood parental relationships since Edmund Gosse's great Father and Son a hundred years ago." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"All Will Be Well is ultimately a memoir that sheds more light on the fiction than the man, giving readers a sense of confirmation that, indeed, these awful things McGahern always wrote about were true-to-life. None of this makes All Will Be Well a failure as a memoir, especially for a reader new to McGahern....The quality of McGahern's writing and the vividness of its scenes lift his book from the ordinary." Floyd Skloot, The Virginia Quarterly Review (read the entire VQR review)
About the Author
John McGahern is the author of six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories, and has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including an award from the Society of Authors, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the Prix Ecureuil de Littérature Étrangère and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Amongst Women, which won both the GPA Book Award and the Irish Times Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in County Leitrim, Ireland.