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Cargando... The Barracks (1963)por John McGahern
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Really intimate view into a family home; the ritual of domesticity - the way in which it is at times a saving grace - the threat of sickness and the shadow that looms when it is found out. A simple story full of so much basic human emotion that it lends layers to the darkest depths. ( ) Elizabeth is the central character of this fairly short, intense novel. She is the second wife of a police sergeant who's not happy in his job but doesn't think he can walk away just yet, step-mother to his three children and wondering if the choices she made in her life were the right ones, especially when she finds she has cancer. In the beginning, I wasn't sure I'd get into the story, but I did and enjoyed it. The Barracks was McGahern's first book and in it you can see the themes and style that he used subsequently, and I think to better effect, in two of his later books: Amongst Women, and That They May See the Rising Sun (sold in the USA as By the Lake). The story is simple: Elizabeth Reegan left Ireland to work as a nurse in London during the war; disappointed in love, she returned to Ireland, and against the advice of her mother and brother, she married a widower with three children. Reegan is a police sergeant in charge of a group of three or four policemen responsible for maintaining law and order in a very quiet country area. The Reegans live in the police barracks. Reegan is a bitter man: unhappy in his job, waiting for the day he can chuck it, counting his pennies and cutting corners on his police work to raise extra cash, and in a state of constant conflict with his superior officer who drops in irregularly to check-up on the paperwork and appearances of the men. Like McGahern's other novels, there is not much by way of action. Rather, it is a study of life, in this case focused on Elizabeth who is in poor health first with breast cancer and then heart failure, as she tries to make sense of her life, her past, and her current life with Reegan and the children, how she might have lived her life differently, what unseen points of life changed her directions, whether or not she is happy, and what does happy mean? We enter Elizabeth's mind and are one with her in her thinking, her wondering, her fear but acceptance of death, her hopes, her fears. McGahern was a very fine writer. His prose is clean and graceful. His characters and their emotions and interactions are true. This book certainly showed the promise that he developed in his other novels. (July/06) sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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Elizabeth Reegan, after years of freedom - and loneliness - marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. The children are not her own; her husband is straining to break free from the servile security of the police force; and her own life, threatened by illness, seems to be losing the last vestiges of its purpose. Moving between tragedy and savage comedy, desperation and joy, John McGahern's first novel is one of haunting power. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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