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hgbooks's review
5.0
I can’t imagine there is anything else out there quite like this. a radical piece of art. special experience
ronanmcd's review against another edition
5.0
Masterful, the perfect novel about 20th century rural Ireland. Quietly exact prose that jumps time and space to give an overall vignette to a cast of characters who are practically living, such is the level to which they are observed.
ryma85's review against another edition
3.0
رواية لطيفة. تحملنا في زيارة إلى الريف الإيرلندي الجميل.
siria's review
4.0
I think it's best to think of That They May Face the Rising Sun less as a novel without a plot and more as a fictionalised anthropological study of rural Ireland. It's a lucid, serene rendering of the kind of place where I grew up: one governed by the rhythms of the landscape and circumscribed by social ritual and interdependence, by the striving towards modernity clashing with the old, old ways of things. McGahern's prose style is superb, sentences turning on the most precise and illuminating of details, and his ability to capture the rhythms of rural Irish Midlands speech is impressive. Every page brought me some new moment of recognition, new ways of seeing my home and myself. A wonderful, extended meditation in prose.
elizabiddy's review
1.0
I am done after 35 pages. It was like Father Fitzgerald (Father Ted), Uncle Colm (Derry Girls) and Know-it-All (Polar Express) were all in a room telling you what happened at the Parish Hall meeting while you're trying to watch your favourite TV show.
Literally the most Irish thing I've read in a while and I'm really bothered by how much it is considered Literature. No wonder any local 'Tom, Dick and Mary' thinks the have a right to your privacy when this is considered Great Irish Writing.
Literally the most Irish thing I've read in a while and I'm really bothered by how much it is considered Literature. No wonder any local 'Tom, Dick and Mary' thinks the have a right to your privacy when this is considered Great Irish Writing.
lisamck's review
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
aoife_liofa's review
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
kingfan30's review
3.0
A nice novel about a couple who live in rural Ireland. There is no plot as such it is all about the way they live and their friends and family. The one thing I did find odd was that the book was not split up into chapters, the first book I think I have read like this
rockdocdee's review
4.0
Not at all a plot driven novel, nor a compulsive page turner, but nonetheless a beautifully written book about living and dying in rural Ireland.