[Nakforappealp]

The Pornographer by John McGahern

Michael is a writer who makes his living penning pornographic tales of two caricatured sexual athletes, the Colonel and Mavis.

But when he meets an older woman and gets her pregnant, he finds his attitudes challenged by this new situation. At the same time, he's dealing with a terminally-ill aunt.

Much has been made elsewhere of the contrast in these two relationships ? in the former, Michael is emotionally detached, while in the latter, he shows a great deal of tenderness. But this doesn't really seem to be the crux of what McGahern is trying to say.

This is more about the complexity of human relationships and the morality that individuals and societies apply to them. What is viewed by some characters as 'moral', for instance, would seem to involve entering a marriage for the worst possible reason ? social approval rather than love ? whereas Michael maintains a different stance.

Not that he himself is some sort of flawless character. Rather, he's indecisive and directionless.

It does have to be read with some awareness of the context ? the 1970s in Ireland. Eight years between Michael and the woman is apparently considered a huge gap, while she is also portrayed as being, from the perspective of that society at least, is a spinster who was pretty much consigned to the shelf at 38.

But she's not easy to like ? indeed, she reads like a boiler bunny, desperate to snare a man, and quick to try to change his life. Her attachment to Michael borders on the hysterical and there is certainly a question of her getting pregnant deliberately ? Michael initially prepares a condom the first time that they have sex, but she refuses. Yet after an initial scare over her period, he still refuses to insist on safe sex, taking her guarantees of it being safe at face value.

She also seems obsessed with ideas of sin and guilt ? repeating, time and again, that she doesn't feel any of the latter. Yet she tries to use guilt to persuade Michael to marry her, even though he tells her explicitly, from the opening of their relationship, that he does not love her.

And then she takes advantage of a rich suitor in London who has tried to persuade her to have an affair with him for years ? but drops him the moment that it is possible to marry him.

It's worth noting here that McGahern never names her ? or Michael's subsequent girlfriend or even his aunt (until the end, when she'd dead). The women here are unimportant, except as ways of examining the trails and tribulations of being a man.

But he's not quite that simplistic ? the men here are hypocritical too. And by the end one is aware that the porn that Michael himself writes is far more honest than many of the relationships around him, including that of his aunt and her husband.

An intriguing novel ? the prose rises to a musical level at times ? it leaves you feeling that, in many ways, it's a sophisticated version of saying that men are from Mars and women are from some other planet, viewed through the particular prism of Catholic Ireland.