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John McGahern's "That They May Face the Rising Sun" is the most perfect novel I've read in years. By perfect I mean composed, or built, like a handcrafted table, with everything mortised and sanded and finished to a T. Things happen in this book, which was published in America with the title "By the Lake," the way they happen in life. We meet people, but we may not learn their first or last names or what exactly they do until the story is half over. Most of the people live on the edges of a lake in the Irish countryside. One couple, the Ruttledges, are transplants from London, and watching them assimilate-- and watching them learn the degree to which they will always remain outsiders--is the spark that drives this story.
Through the Ruttledges we meet the rest: Jamesie and Mary, a kindly older couple across the lake; John Quinn, a womanizer; Patrick Ryan, a ...