Letter
Miseries
8 November 1979
SIR: D.J. Enright has a lot of good fun with the thought that John McGahern’s new novel exhibits a hero who is ‘relentlessly miserable’, though the Ireland he lives in affords plenty to eat and drink. But people are often miserable, and there’s a literature to show, together with much in the way of other evidence, that Irish people, perhaps, are especially miserable. Their misery may even be...