Young John McGahern: Becoming a NovelistJohn McGahern was the most admired Irish novelist of the past fifty years. His accessible fiction won him a wide readership throughout Ireland, but the accomplishment of his craft ensured that he also became known as a writer's writer. He set his novels in places he knew intimately Dublin, London, and the West of Ireland, where he grew up and became known for the intimacy and honesty of his mapping of home truths of Irish life. His first novel, The