SOURCE: "Everyday Ecstasies," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4302, September 13, 1985, p. 1001.

Craig is an Irish editor and critic. In the following review of High Ground, she surveys the characters and settings of McGahern 's short fiction and praises his realism and attention to detail.

In "Oldfashioned", perhaps the most highly-charged and accomplished of the stories in his new collection [High Ground], John McGahern allows himself a loaded observation about the works of an Irish documentary filmmaker:

they won him a sort of fame: some thought they were serious, well-made, and compulsive viewing, bringing things to light that were in bad need of light; but others maintained that they were humourless, morbid, and restricted to a narrow view that was more revealing of private obsessions than any truths about life or Irish life in general.

Change the medium, and you have a summary of McGahern's own experience, especially with...