SOURCE: Barnacle, Hugo. “On the Farm.” New Statesman 131, no. 4570 (14 January 2002): 51–52.

In the following review, Barnacle offers a positive assessment of That They May Face the Rising Sun.

A couple of downshifters, Joe and Kate Ruttledge, have left their advertising jobs in London and moved to a small farm in Ireland near where Joe grew up. John McGahern walks us through a year in the lives of the Ruttledges and their neighbours [in That They May Face the Rising Sun]: the cycle of the seasons, birth and death among animals and humans, simple tasks, complex rivalries, gossip. If McGahern is familiar with Cold Comfort Farm, he certainly doesn't let it put him off.

The nearest railway station is Dromod, so we soon know we're somewhere in the middle of County Leitrim. It takes a little longer to work out that we're also somewhere in the past. Nobody's on the...