Mahoney’s passive-aggressive persona is sent up wonderfully on occassion, especially when his kids mimic him behind his back.

The Dark by John McGahern | Goodreads The Dark by John McGahern | Goodreads

The Censorship of Publications Board would deem that the novel posed a risk to public morality because of its "indecent or obscene" content.

Although McGahern can hardly trust himself to believe it, this oppression gradually leads him towards a form of salvation. Truly an interesting book and also an intriguing contrast to the Marilynne Robinson books and discussion going on elsewhere in this blog. Kim McMullen refers to the literature of Ireland’s mid-century decades as reflective of a time fraught with “residual social pathologies, borne by economic, cultural, and social isolation, emotional austerity, and sexual repression that attended Ireland’s emergence as an independent nation. The boy (who is never named) is, at the same time, beset by his own sexual urgings as he matures, is torn on whether to become a priest, wins a scholarship to college which is a huge achievement in his village, but then is conflicted as to whether to accept that or a job immediately offered in the civil service.

The Dark (McGahern novel) - Wikipedia

Born in Knockanroe about half a mile from Ballinamore, County Leitrim, John McGahern was the eldest child of seven. This is a novel about the powerful pulls and ties of family and the hunger for love and connection that can transcend cruelty. Butler and her generation of gender theorists cracked open such previous understandings of gender and gendering to expose pathways of identity-making that are more fluid than conventionally imagined. His second novel, The Dark, published in 1965, was banned in Ireland, and denounced from the pulpit as pornographic.Althusser’s words conjure another significant, complex function that the family unit—not only the nuclear family, but the entire constellation of persons who make up a familial set—performs as an apparatus of ideology: the familial household is the fundamental place of gendering children. The author's unusual writing style might have puzzled some readers as well, since the central character is referred to as You, He, They, or I at various points in the narrative. It is difficult to believe that 50 years have passed since 260 advance copies of John McGahern's second novel, The Dark, were seized by Irish Customs and Excise officers. Such acts went largely undetected and unpunished, mainly as a result of the dominant position of the father in Irish society, as can be gauged from the fact that the adolescent never mentions them in Confession or in any other forum. Plagued by doubts about his suitability for the priesthood, Mahoney decides to spend some time with his cousin Fr Gerald.