McGahern began his relationship with the New Review as early as its second issue, when it published an extract from his brilliant novel, The Leavetaking. It is this self-contained piece from a year later, however, that I really love.
Composed, like its title, of three parts, it starts with the accidental death of an Irish worker on a London building site. Then it moves to County Leitrim, to the moment when the man’s family learn of their loss. Then it’s several weeks later, and we’re at a dance held to raise funds for the family, who have bankrupted themselves flying their boy over from England. All this, which says so much about Anglo-Irish relations at that time, and manages to be first shocking, then devastating, then heartwarming – all this in just a few pages. It’s a masterpiece of concision.
First published in the New Review, October 1975. Collected in Getting Through, Faber & Faber, 1978
A Personal Anthology 