Book description
Michael, a writer of pornographic fiction, creates an ideal world
of sex through his two stock athletes, Colonel Grimshaw and Mavis
Carmichael, while he bungles every phase of his entanglement with an
older woman who has the misfortune to fall in love with him. But his
insensitivity to this love is in direct contrast to the tenderness
with which he attempts to make his aunt's slow death in hospital
tolerable, while his employer, Maloney, failed poet and comic king of
pornographers, comes gradually to preside over this broken world.
Everywhere in this rich novel is the drama of opposites, but, above
all, sex and death are never far from each other. 'A marvellous novel,
deep, moving, rich and resonant, about love, lust, life and death.'
Sunday Express 'A novel that succeeds beautifully in doing what it
sets out to do; to record and illuminate varieties of disenchantment.'
Times Literary Supplement 'An admirable book, one of the finest I have
read for a long time ... I cannot recommend Mr McGahern too strongly.'
Sunday Telegraph
John McGahern was born in Dublin in 1934. He is the author of
six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories, and
was the recipient of numerous awards and honours. Amongst Women was
shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1990.
