The Barracks

by John McGahern

Elizabeth Reegan, after years of freedom - and loneliness, marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. Moving between tragedy and savage comedy, desperation and joy, this was John McGahern's first novel.

Genres: Fiction, Irish Literature, Ireland, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Classics, Novels

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

McGahern began his career as a schoolteacher at Scoil Eoin Báiste (Belgrove) primary school in Clontarf, Ireland, where, for a period, he taught the eminent academic Declan Kiberd before turning to writing full-time. McGahern's second novel 'The Dark' was banned in Ireland for its alleged pornographic content and implied clerical sexual abuse. In the controversy over this he was forced to resign his teaching post. He subsequently moved to England where he worked in a variety of jobs before returning to Ireland to live and work on a small farm in Fenagh in County Leitrim, located halfway between Ballinamore and Mohill. His third novel 'Amongst Women' was shortlisted for the 1990 Man Booker Prize.
He died from cancer in Dublin on March 30, 2006.

Reviews

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 4 out of 5]

'It’s the way of the world’, she said.
‘It’s the way surely’ he laughed harshly.

If you’re familiar with John McGahern’s work then you will recognize many of the themes he often explores in his novels here. Overbearing and distant husbands and fathers, women living in quiet desperation with few options but to just make it through their days, and a claustrophobic backdrop where most of the story takes place. As this was McGahern’s first novel, the reader can certainly feel him exploring these character types for the first time. While they will be more fully fleshed out in the years to come, they are still startlingly vivid and tragic people.
“The Barracks” revolves mainly around the lives of Elizabeth Reagan and her husband who reside in the police barracks that provide housing for her husband and family. We learn early on that Elizabeth is not his first wife and as such there seems to be little love between her and her husband. Her role in the Reagan household is more akin to a maid or servant as she cleans, washes, and cares for her husband’s children.
Told almost entirely from her perspective, we realize that things were not always this way for Elizabeth. Before marrying her husband and moving to the countryside, she was once a nurse in London. In addition, she had a torrid love affair with a man who while emotionally unstable, constantly challenged her intellectually. In short, her new life away from the city and with a man who barely acknowledges her presence is difficult for her to handle. Rather than lash out however, she opts instead for a kind of understated futility.
When her husband rages about his dead end job and the indignities he must suffer at the hands of his supervisor, she simply nods and retreats back into her inner world of memories of days gone by. When her husband schemes about how to make more money to free himself from what he considers his own dead end life (whether the freedom he craves includes her or not we are never quite sure), she accepts it with resignation. That he continues to do so even after she falls gravely ill doesn’t seem to change anything in his life or hers. They are married but in every sense live in different emotional worlds. They move in opposite directions, crave a vague liberation from each other but are unable to ever summon the courage to do so. It is the story of two people who know fundamental changes must be made to be happy, but also knowing that the steps needed to be taken, will never be.
They are two profoundly sad people whose sadness is only compounded by the public faces they must present in their everyday interactions. For Elizabeth it is the daily chit chat she must engage people with in her day to day life, with people who she has no desire to talk to but socially are impossible to ignore. For Reegan it is having to be subservient to his police supervisor who he loathes, but also knows he cannot ever express his true feelings toward for fear of losing a livelihood he also despises.
Their stories are in many respects our stories. Who after all hasn’t felt a creeping dread at having to engage in a superficial conversation with someone who is probably as unhappy to do it as you are? Who hasn’t felt trapped at some point in life in a job? A relationship? Something you can’t clearly articulate? McGahern’s characters resonate because in many respects they are us. Watching them struggle is like turning a mirror on ourselves. Insightful perhaps, but decidedly painful and uncomfortable.

[Lea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite wikipedia calling him "arguably the most important Irish novelist since Samuel Beckett", I'd never heard of John McGahern before picking this up. From the get-go "The Barracks", his debut from 1963, is well-written, introspective, very bleak and depressing. Both the clinically depressed main character, who we watch as she suffers through breast cancer, and her husband, whose silent volatile anger thrums though each scene he's in, as well as his more or less faceless children and other side characters - I did not want to spend time with them, but the way the situation and characters are described is fascinating. The atmosphere that is created is masterful. Sadly, I found the second half a little bit of a struggle to get through, as there is little plot to hold your hand.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Barracks of the book title is the police station in a little Irish village. Three officers work shifts, coming and going on a daily basis, and Sergeant Reegan lives in one part of the barracks with his family—his second wife, Elizabeth, and the three young children from his first marriage, Una, Sheila, and Willie. The novel is primarily Elizabeth’s story, but also a good portion of Reegan’s, and McGahern quickly paints a picture of quiet desperation for both husband and wife, even though they seem to genuinely love each other in a certain way.

Elizabeth has spent 20 years or so in post-war London working as a nurse. It was a busy life, filled with activity, socializing, and fun. Above all, it was a life of independence and freedom. And she had found love, a love robust and romantic enough for her to pin all her future hopes on it. But she is thunderstruck and crushed when her imagined future husband tells her he won’t marry her because he doesn’t love her. Though he is a doctor, his life appears to be without purpose, energy, or fulfillment. His favorite lament is, “What the hell is all this living and dying about anyway, Elizabeth? That’s what I’d like to know.”

Dazed, she finds her way back to Ireland and marries widower Reegan. Her life is now one of routine, punctuated by numerous domestic tasks, some lengthy, others over in minutes, but in all of which Elizabeth finds some intrinsic pleasure. However, the marriage is wanting: there is respect and courtesy and consideration, but little intimacy; and the demands of looking after the family’s needs leave little time for socializing. One time, Elizabeth reflects: “Reegan was growing old, and so was she. There was nothing said or given or fulfilled in her life.” And later in the novel: “She was quiet. Nothing short of a miracle would change any of their lives, their lives and his life and her life without purpose, and it seemed as if it might never come now…”

Meanwhile Reegan is locked in an intense battle with Superintendent Quirke, who seems determined to oust Reegan from his job by setting standards which he knows Reegan could satisfy, but which pride and venomous hate often hinder compliance. Reegan has a dream just barely out of reach which will enable him to thumb his nose at Quirke and the job. His yearning for total independence is palpable. The drama then heightens when Elizabeth’s health is in jeopardy, and though Reegan is solicitous of Elizabeth’s well-being, she begins to reflect on her life with a hint of speculation of whether she should ever have left London.

The environmental backdrop for the unfolding drama is the Irish countryside, which McGahern describes with poetic affection and which, despite seasonal changes, often mirrors the poignant desperation of grinding, quotidian human life. McGahern draws his sad, heartrending story to an end in masterly fashion with a power and skill stunning for a first novel by a twenty-something writer. This is the first book I have read by this author—it will not be the last.

[Dem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to follow

[Lewis Woolston · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the coldest, bleakest and yet somehow most riveting books i've read in years.
Elizabeth has come back to Ireland, she worked as nurse in London during the war and experienced a bit more of life than what provincial, Catholic Ireland could offer her. While in London she had a romance with a doctor who turned out to be a depressed alcoholic who broke her heart.
So she came back to a little town in Ireland to become the wife of a Police Officer and stepmother to his children. There is some contentment to the domestic routine and even a tiny spark of almost happiness but something broke in Elizabeth when she was in London and it never healed.
Then Elizabeth gets sick...
John McGahern is a master at wringing out the emotion with a few words and phrases that don't seem much but which in his hands carry serious weight.
I will be reading more of him soon I hope.

[Neil Blackbyrne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bleak but brilliant.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEj8pUh...

Really good discussion of the book by Colm Toibín and Frank Shovlin (University of Liverpool).

[Bruddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was greatly impressed by the quality of writing in this novel, particularly given that the book's main character, a middle-aged woman stricken with cancer, was created by an author who at the time was still in his twenties. Elizabeth Reegan lives with her police-sergeant husband John and three young stepchildren in a rural police barracks in the west of Ireland, spending her days completing domestic chores and caring for her family. She once worked as a nurse in London, where she had a love affair with a doctor, who stimulated her interest in books and art. How did she end up back in her small village married to a discontent and temperamental man, struggling to care for him and his children? The question is not easily answered because Elizabeth is drawn by John McGahern with great delicacy and beauty. She is an intelligent, loving and undemanding person, who like many people, spends her days negotiating menial tasks while holding on to fading aspirations. Was there another life she might have lived if she’d chosen? There is a great spiritual component in this book, which unfolds in Elizabeth’s search for purpose and meaning as she reflects on both her life and its impending physical deterioration:

“She wasn’t a leisured person, all her life she had to work with her hands, the most of her energy had been absorbed by that, little more than a performing animal; her praying and her thinking and reading just pale little sideshows. A few impassioned months of her life had perhaps risen to such a fever as to blot everything else out, but they were only months or maybe but days in so many years.”

Beyond the intriguing story line, The Barracks also provides a look at Irish life during the mid-20th Century. From what I’ve ascertained from this book, Ireland at the time was close to a theocracy, informed at almost every level by the Catholic Church. The characters in this book kneel together each evening to the say the Rosary, attend mass and seek solace in prayer. Notwithstanding that we might not identify with this environment, Elizabeth Reegan asks the questions most of us ponder at some point. Have I lived a meaningful life? Could I have done anything differently?

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

John McGahern was twenty-nine when this, his first and somewhat autobiographical novel, was published, as he was in fact raise in a small Garda Síochána (the Irish national police force, in English, the "Civil Guards") barracks. And like the children in the novel, his mother died when he was very young.

But this isn't a coming-of-age novel; the main characters are all adults, particularly the Sargeant, Reegan, and his second wife, Elizabeth. A veteran of the Irish War of Independence and its horric follow up, the Civil War, Reegan was a leader of men in his youth who idealistically joined the nascant nation's police service only to become embittered and disillusioned by the pettiness and officiousness of his superiors and the monotony of his duties in a quiet backwater in Co. Roscommon. In the stultifying moral atmosphere of 1950s Ireland, Reegan and Elizabeth has no outlet for their emotions which eat at their souls much like the cancer that Elizabeth contracts eats away at her body.

Significantly, the majority of the novel is the interior monologue of Elizabeth. We learn of Reegan's reticence as well as his hopes and fears, from his wife. We learn next to nothing about Reegan's life outside the chronology of the book, but much about Elizabeth as a young nurse working in London during the Blitz and immediately afterwards.

This is a powerful book, but seems somewhat dated. The Ireland that McGahern wrote about with such ferocity is no more. Not even in memory, for McGahern's last novel—That They May Face the Rising Sun (published as The Lake in the U.S.) finds him in the same landscape, older, wiser, perhaps more resigned and certainly more in tune with the ebb and flow of the rural year.

[Holly]

From Reading Matters: I could have listed dozens of books that fit this category (Changed My World), but I've opted for McGahern's debut novel, which I read and reviewed in 2006, because it introduced me to a writer that truly opened my eyes to the beauty and emotional power of literature. I was so moved by this novel, about a woman who marries a much older man and then discovers she has breast cancer but tries to hide it from the people she loves, that I rushed out and bought the rest of McGahern's novels. I'm not sure what astonishes me more when I look back on this: that he only wrote six between 1963 and 2003, or that I found them all sitting on the shelves of Waterstone's Picadilly at the exact moment I wanted them.

[Hester · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stunning debut full of the slow sorrow of a woman whose life as a daughter , wife and mother offers her nothing but restriction , decline and silence .

Silence is the major theme here , something she is trained to exist in . Her brief transgression into a life as a nurse in England , during the war and beyond the confines of life in rural Ireland , is too dangerous to remember or mention .

There is another war to occupy her much older husband now , himself a Garda stationed in the barracks and separate from the village . Three step children to raise. And an illness from which she will not recover and whose brutal finality she bears silently and alone .

[Georgina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love John McGahern. The book begins: "Mrs Reegan darned an old woollen sock as the February night came on, her head bent, catching the threads on the needle by the light of the fire, the daylight gone without her noticing." What a writer.

[Sanjuro · Rating 3 out of 5]

John McGahern is widely recognized as one of the greatest writers in Ireland's great literary history. The Barracks is his first novel, and in many ways epitomizes the Irish novel of the late 2oth century - grim, introspective, realistic. The novel could have been lived by any number of Irish families of the time. This is a strength, although this style of writing may be running its course in Irish literature.

The novel's greatest weakness is the characters, who are largely too uninteresting to keep one's attention for long. This made the novel a bit difficult to get through at points. However, the writing style is beautiful, and the inner life of the characters so well thought through and deeply detailed that, for a first novel, it was obvious that McGahern was a massively talented writer from the start. After reading this, it would have been obvious to anyone when the novel was published that McGahern would eventually write some truly remarkable stories.

[A. Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The invention of Elizabeth and her journey are what make this novel a wonderful story. She is thoroughly compelling. The book begins and ends with a focus on Reegan, her policeman husband, modeled loosely on McGahern's father, but the bulk of the book is Elizabeth's. The transitions in and out of her story are not smooth enough to be flawless; her life and illness are something like a prolonged aside, but she is thoughtfully, tenderly, and respectfully written. McGahern makes use of a variety of autobiographical details, but this story is not his life. In the end, the book has much to say of lost dreams, and thus has a lot to say that will resonate with any reader.

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish 19 years ago I had kept something that I know I had. It was a review from a literary periodical that listed 3 books as, I recall, Irish classics that were under-appreciated. And they were older works so I got all three of them from used book stores. Two I am sure of, The Barracks (McGahern) and The Ocean (James Hanley, 1941). I believe the third one was Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins (1966). I think after reading those three books I grew to appreciate Irish fiction and it has stayed with me since. I wish I remembered the review article!

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

McGahern transports the reader to the west of Ireland, vividly portraying a woman returning from nursing soldiers in London and marrying a widower with two children. Her former lover laments, "What the hell is all this living and dying about anyway." The novel doesn't answer the question, but it rises to her mind as she faces her own death, and it will continue to haunt the reader long reading after this elegaic book.

[Dean Fee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first McGahern book. It was very real and ordinary and almost nihilist from some perspectives. It's more of a thinking man's book than something propelled on by story and plot and I enjoyed that. It was powerful at times and I think a return to it is needed at some time in the future.

[Rosalie Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harrowing and terrifying. The plot itself is gentle and slow and goes nowhere in particular but the author perfectly captures the futility of life. This is not a cheery book. Get a rainy day and a duvet and some tissue because you are fairly likely to cry.

[Gurldoggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad, elegant portrait of a depressed woman in 1940’s Ireland, too modern to stay in her weary marriage, and too scared to leave. Beautifully realized characters and radiant landscapes described in crystal-clear prose.

[Gayle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has to be the most depressing debut novel of all time -

[Luke Hosford · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I loved his final novel for its gentle, ponderous nature, and general content worldview, this one’s strongest aspect was its permeating sense of sadness while maintaining this enveloping nature. He has an amazing ability to capture a lot in one sweeping description without it appearing overly dramatic or out of place. His own perceptions flow into the observations of the character seamlessly.
As he transitioned from a kind of energetic rebellion to settled, day in the life style, it became slightly more difficult to maintain as much interest and attention . For instance, I struggled to distinguish between the three guards that worked with the sergeant. This probably offers an insight into being aware of what your style is doing to the reader. Abrupt changes of style can be impressive or well-executed, but if you change from intense, rebellious energy to a languid one, don’t be surprised if your reader starts to lose interest just a little.
It really recaptured the imagination towards the end though, and I noticed how well integrated all of the aspects of their lives were. This was especially true of the parts of their lives that were different to mine, like the centrality of the church. It can be hard sometimes to just think in the abstract of what that could have been like, for the Christian God to have been such a central tenet of your daily thought process, and I think this book integrated this without being at all judgmental, almost matter of fact, which is probably more effective than someone taking a more contrarian, retrospective look. Obviously, any sort of criticism is therefore a bit muted but if the aim is to imagine then it does exactly that.
I also think the ending was particularly strong, as the strength of the Sergeant is displayed fully. He represents a certain disappointment that existed I’m sure with anyone who was around when the Irish State was being set up. While he’s not being romantic about his fighting past, I’m sure the character held a certain idea of himself and what his life would be like and what the country would be like, and he still recognises the abusing authority figure that surely motivated his decision to join up with the fighting in the first place plaguing his life now. The reclamation of that pride, while hollow, was captured remarkably.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a disgrace how little known McGahern sometimes seems to be outside his own country (except perhaps in France, where all his work seems to have been published in translation). This is the real stuff, and so much better than a lot of shit on this site that gets tens of thousands of ratings, while this book has not even received eight hundred so far. Really -- 800? This guy would have deserved a Nobel Prize, for my money. (But there are always more writers who do than who actually receive it, that's all in the game.)
His later novels may even be better, but already in this debut you see a fierce humanity, a deeply imagined reality (probably partly autobiographical, I haven't looked it up but it feels like that), an unflinching eye for unpleasant truths and a style completely devoid of cliches. This is the real stuff.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book and a wonderful study of personality and emotion, with really in depth psychological insights into the characters. The structure and pace can be a little cumbersome at times, perhaps this has to do with the period the book was written, and as one of his first books it showed great promise.

[Catie]

Recommendation from @sennichi - 2/4/2018

[Gillian Norrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bleak but brilliant

[Matt Wrafter · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is very depressing to me that a 29 year old wrote this absolutely dour and hopeless novel.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pure joy to read such beautiful literature. Powerful, haunting, depressing and heartbreaking, this was John McGahern’s debut novel. To be able to portray ordinary thoughts and feelings in ordinary people in an ordinary rural village takes amazing talent and this book is extraordinary on every level.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

John McGahern's The Barracks is a stark and depressing look at the life of a second wife to an unhappy police officer in a small Irish town. Once you realize the story you are reading is not a happy story but a bleak look at life and the purpose of life, you can appreciate McGahern's writing style. The story was middle of the road, in my opinion, and while I can see the merits of reading, discussing, and thinking about the story, it is not the most fun story out there.
Elizabeth Reegan is the second wife of a police officer. Elizabeth worries about how she fits in with her new family, she worries about the closeness of the small town, she worries about the life she used to have as a nurse in London, and she worries about the purpose of her life. Essentially she worries a lot, and it is not always easy to decide whether some of her worries are valid or are all in her head. For example, she doesn't think the children love her, but most of their actions seem kind and loving. Her husband is not happy in his job and wants to save up money to own a farm. Both characters are unhappy with their lots in life, but neither side expresses their feelings to each other. As Elizabeth's health deteriorates she struggles between wanting to live and succumbing to the comforts of death.
McGahern's story is a look at the purpose of life when everyone ends up dead. Life may not seem to have a purpose, but it is up to you to decide the direction of your life because life is not fair, it is not easy, and it will end, but by doing what you love (have passion about) you can find satisfaction.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

McGahern is the opposite of a comfort read for me -- his writing is like cod liver oil; a bizarre, cruel necessity.

I can understand why someone like Haruki Murakami can so often write similar books when his books largely consist of describing what he's listening to, what he's eating, and women's breasts. I have no idea why McGahern so stubbornly ploughed the fields of rural Irish misery — his autobiography is scarcely different from any of his books, and it really made me wonder what McGahern was like to be around, if he was a laugh, because his books aren't.

Some have mentioned that McGahern's Ireland is a thing of the past, but I don't agree. I am a product of my parents, they of theirs — McGahern's generation, roughly. It hasn't fully gone away, and threatens always to return. It seems to me the only reason we shouldn't fear Ireland returning to 1950s theocracy is that we will end up like another homogenous plaything of the conspiratorial and the far right in the great immigration debates of our time. Here's to the future.

[Ineska Stojšić · Rating 5 out of 5]

McGahern does something unique in this fiction, elevating life, obligation, and ritual. His omniscient narrator proves the value of the protagonist even when her internal monologue is critical or self depracating. It is a requiem for Elizabeth who lives a good and normal life, nervously marrying a widow with children, and cherishing life more in the end when finally consumed by cancer. "...; the blackcurrants were falling with ripenesss in the garden and she had to pick them ... She smelled the bacon frying as pure sweetness when she closed the door." This is almost a fugue style, layered requiem.

[Margaret Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on McGahern's own experience of growing up in a Garda barracks with his father, this book is both exquisite and excruciating. John McGahern absolutely nails the minutiae of every day living in 1950s Ireland. Written in 1963 and told mainly through the eyes of the wife and step-mother, it is remarkable that a man could write with such sensitivity about the everyday mundane life of an Irish housewife, her hopes, aspirations, health challenges and disappointments. The detail doesn't always make for an easy read, hence the 4 stars but an admirable first novel nonetheless.