Sampson, Denis. 1991. “Introducing John McGahern”. Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 17.1. Special Issue on John McGahern. 1-9. Jamesie): "I don't know how you can drink that red wine. It tastes like pure poison. Yer man here was trying to get behind the fence."

Denis Sampson reads in scenes like the one above, McGahern’s preoccupation with openings and enclosures, imagery that Sampson suggests revealed in McGahern’s earlier works a human need to frame our lives or, in other words, a human need for art. Here, however, Sampson observes a shift: the image now offers humans a portal into something greater than art and reflects the urge to integrate with nature (2005: 144). Both interpretations of the same symbol enrich the prodigal reading of McGahern’s canon in initially representing the perception of the traveler needing to shape his destiny, and then that of the home comer, able to reintegrate. Time itself is bound to nature in McGahern’s world, notes Ryan Taylor in The Yale Review of Books, measured by the changes in the natural landscape (2005). But it is the lyrical warmness of McGahern’s work which cause it to linger in the memory. In addition to the many evocations of life around the lake and its surroundings, episodes such as the Monaghan Day scene display all the descriptive authority and local knowledge of a novelist such as Thomas Hardy, writing in a very similar milieu:This also is a statement which could stand as a testament to McGahern’s own realised aims in That They May Face the Rising Sun, which despite managing to retain an innate believability, portrays an idyllic world, which invites comparison with the Garden of Eden. Joe and Kate Ruttledge are described in terms which evoke thoughts of Adam and Eve before the fall – “there are times when they’d make you wonder whether they are man and woman at all”. In the first paragraph of the novel we are told that “they had the entire world to themselves” and shortly after their home is described as “a little paradise”. Sampson, Denis. 2005 “’Open to the World’: A Reading of John McGahern’s “ That They May Face the Rising Sun”. The Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies. 35.1. Special Issue: John McGahern. 137-146. The Collected Stories (1992), includes the three previous volumes of short stories (some of the stories appear in a slightly different form) and two additional stories – "The Creamery Manager" and "The Country Funeral". The former first appeared in Krina (1989).

Jamesie): "I think if there's a hell and heaven that one or the other or both of the places are going to be vastly overcrowded." Kennedy, Eileen. 1983. “The Novels of John McGahern”. Contemporary Irish Writing. Eds. James Brophy and Raymond Porter. Boston: Twayne. 115-126. John McGahern. Love of the World: Essays. Edited by Stanley van der Ziel. Introduction by Declan Kiberd. London: Faber and Faber, 2009. Easter morning came clear. There was no wind on the lake. There was also a great stillness. When the bells rang out for Mass, the strokes trembling on the water, they had the entire Easter world to themselves.” I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to talk about except for my appreciation for his work,” says the film-maker. “I thought he was getting at something that I think that a lot of other people aren’t getting even close to. I wanted t see if there was something we could collaborate on. And then he met him in England in 2018. He was talking about this new show that he was doing. It was non-narrative theatre work. Through talking with Michael we came up with the idea of making a film of the process of him staging the show. Michael has a kind of a unique approach and very strong philosophical outlook about how theatre and dance should be done.And Joe suggests to us how this intensely local story, sturdy with work and things, shining with the visible world, opens out into larger meanings and ideas. Helping the builder with the shed roof, he observes 'how the rafters frame the sky. How they make it look more human by reducing the sky, and then the whole sky grows out from that small space'. 'As long as they hold the iron, lad, they'll do,' the builder replies. I think I’ve learned from every film that I’ve made,” he says. “I’m learning as I go along. I feel I have to be challenging myself every time I start a new film. For most of my work, I want an Irish audience to watch it. I’m only interested in talking to Irish people; in a sense that you can go deeper if you’re just setting your sights on an Irish audience, because you can presume that they know more about certain subjects. You don’t have to explain it to the Americans or anybody else. I’m not too worried about a big progression. That it frees me up in all sorts of ways. Battersby, Eileen. 2001. “A Superb Earthly Pastoral”. Review of That They May Face the Rising Sun. The Irish Times. Dec. 8. A year in the lives of these and other characters unfolds through the richly observed rituals of work and play, of religious observance and annual festivals, and the details of the changing seasons, of the cycles of birth and death. With deceptive simplicity and eloquence, the author reveals the fundamental workings of human nature as it encounters the extraordinary trials and pleasures, terrors and beauty, of ordinary life.

Director and co-writer Pat Collins has made a number of specialist documentaries expressing an appreciation of craft, creativity and folklore, including John McGahern: A Private World (2005) and Henry Glassie: Field Work (2019). He is perfectly in tune with McGahern’s world, offering a portrait of a community that survives by the sweat of its own labour. We witness the annual harvest, the slow, never-ending construction of a new building; the circle of life is marked in a joyous autumnal marriage, hopes and fears for an unknown future and the sting of inevitable deaths. Throughout the novel I was trying to place what year the story takes place as some parts hints at the 50s/60s and others the late 80s(which was where I would put it) and I think readers will make it fit the timeframe that suits them . I think that if there’s a hell and a heaven that one or other or both of the places are going to be vastly overcrowded,” he said with surprising heaviness. Even his walk and tone had changed.Irish Cinema is having something of a moment at present with the likes of The Banshees of Inisherin , Lakelands and God’s Creatures all earning acclaim over the past year. Pat Collins has earned himself a credible reputation with his films Song of Granite, Silence and The Dance, and his latest is an adaptation of That They May Face the Rising Sun by acclaimed writer John McGahern, whichtells the life of a year in the life of a rural Irish community. Here too is another replay of the Prodigal son, the emigrant returning home to the truly green pastures that were always there. Only this time the story ends as happily as the original parable: a joyous return, a warm welcome. It is Philly’s recognition of the gifts of Irish country life that distinguishes his move home from Michael Moran’s retreat and the Pornographer’s rejection of his urban life. The Pornographer’s sphere of influence never grows beyond the personal, and Moran personifies isolationism and shuns his community. Philly embraces his Irish community and reconnects. Thus begins, Whyte writes, McGahern’s “protagonist’s move from isolation into relationship in a small community of accepted manners” (2002: 2). Quinn, Antoinette. 1991. “A Prayer for My Daughter”. Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 17.1. Special Issue on John McGahern. 79-90. An illuminating interview with Michael Keegan-Dolan was left, tantalisingly, on the cutting room floor