Through the Ruttledges we meet the rest: Jamesie and Mary, a kindly older couple across the lake; John Quinn, a womanizer; Patrick Ryan, a handyman and a brooding soul, one of those disagreeable people who see to the heart of things and then use what they know like a hammer. Mostly McGahern lets them introduce themselves according to what they talk about: the weather, the livestock, the coming of telephone poles to the neighborhood. The story covers a year, and seasons and change are its building blocks. And while the people who live beside this lake are not terribly wise, they are at home in their world: “Happiness,” Ruttledge decides, “could not be sought or worried into being, or even fully grasped; it should be allowed its own slow pace so that it passes unnoticed, if it ever comes at all.” I saved the last 20 pages of the book for two weeks, unread: as long as I did not finish, I could stay in that world beside the lake.
