All Will Be Well Book

How do we deal with the hurt and sadness that, from the moment we are born, begins to accumulate in our hearts? There are, in essence, two ways to respond to the degree of suffering we experience. We can decide that since life has, in a multitude of ways, been damaging to us, we should share the damage around and inflict those closest to us with their share of the hurt. Do onto others as was done to you.
"Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.", as Philip Larkin wrote.

Alternatively you can make a resolute decision that since you have felt the weight of pain, you will do all you can to lighten, and enlighten, the lives of those you love. The mistakes of the past need not be repeated and can indeed be transcended, to the benefit of all.

John McGahern's father was a dedicated follower of the former strategy. Intriguingly little is said about the man's early life. This is the sum total of what we are told:

He had set out as a gifted, difficult only child, both over-protected and spoiled, while remaining exposed to his mother's violent corrections.

From that we can at least deduce that he knew what it was to have beatings inflicted on him and, perhaps, that he was exposed to too much attention, to a degree that would prove difficult to replicate in adult life except by instilling fear in those around him. In this, at least, he was successful, but in putting emphasis on one side of our character we often expose the side we wish to keep hidden and by his actions Sargent McGahern - a member of the Irish police force - revealed that above all, and to all, he was a coward and a bully.

Against the depiction of his father, and in a Manichean fashion, John McGahern offers us a portrait of kindness and stoical fortitude on the part of his mother. She was a teacher in a succession of tiny, rural schools and before he was old enough to be himself a pupil, she used to bring John along with her, instilling in him - as they walked the narrow roads and lanes - a knowledge and love of the flowers and trees they saw as they walked the mile or two to the school.





For much of the time his mother was, in effect, a single parent because his father preferred to remain at the Guards barracks - a mere twenty miles away - and visited only when it suited him. During these brief engagements with his family he did, however, impose himself as a figure of rigid authority, one who would not allow his son a 'soft' upbringing. So it was that he cut off all of the curls from the young Sean's hair (Sean is the Irish version of John).

The combined salaries of a teacher and a Garda Sargent would have been well above average in the economically deprived Ireland of the 40s and 50s, but the Sargent was a particularly pernicious miser and it is infuriating to read of his penny-pinching at the time when his wife was convalescing after an operation for cancer. In her letters she has to repeatedly reassure him that she is being thrifty and refraining from any hint of extravagance. That disease would eventually take Sean's beloved mother who never received a visit from her cowardly husband in the last month of her life. His only action was to have the home in which she lay cleared of all furniture so that it could be brought to the barracks. Her death lead to a catastrophically injurious situation for the then nine-year old boy and his younger siblings all of whom had to now live with a father who was utterly ill-suited to the task of raising children. His viciously violent outbursts and brutal beatings were, in his mind, justified by all he had endured and were fueled by paroxysms of self-pity:

'Of course I'm told nothing. I don't count', he began. 'I'm not consulted about anything that goes on. I don't exist. Pay no attention to me. This old fool has to carry the can for everyone so that they all can sit back. God, o God, O God, what did I do to deserve such a cross' .

Somehow the children survived and became, through force of will and nature, functioning adults who could live lives that were blighted but which could become fully their own.

In writing this memoir and, it would seem, in the life he lived, John McGahern showed how it is possible to take the alternative approach to one's early suffering. His was a conscious and determined decision that all of what he endured need not become the justification for adding to the suffering of others, although interestingly he never had any children of his own. One of the remarkable aspects of this book is the lack of sentimentality. Never once did I feel that he was striking a false note or overdoing the feelings he had towards his mother or indeed the negative feeling he had towards his father, strong and all as those feelings are. For me, he has achieved a remarkable feat by conveying to the reader an intimate understanding of the circumstances of his upbringing and the development of his emotional inner-life. I like the style of the writing too. There is a very appealing lyricism throughout. Even though so many awful things happen in the course of the book, he will remind us that there was always beauty there too if you looked and appreciated the glories of nature, as his mother had shown him on their walks to school, all those years before.