All Will Be Well by John Mcgahern Reviewed by Floyd Skloot
The Virginia Quarterly Review
"Irish novelist and short story writer John McGahern faces a daunting challenge when writing a memoir: '[It] is impossible to know oneself, since we cannot see ourselves as we are seen.' Further, he acknowledges that 'it may be almost as difficult to understand those close to us, whether that closeness be of enmity or love or their fluctuating tides.' Almost, but not quite: understanding others is, at least, not impossible. Yet now, at seventy-one and urged on by his siblings, liberated by his father's death, living again along the same lanes where he spent his traumatic childhood, and facing his own mortality, McGahern feels compelled to write a memoir, to see and know himself despite his doubts about being able to do so." Read the entire Virginia Quarterly Review review.