Amongst Woman by John McGahern (1990)

Have you ever known someone who seemed even tempered to the outside world, but who was a tyrant inside his own family circle? Someone who could be loving to the wife and children in one minute before turning surly and abusive in the blink of an eye, for the flimsiest of reasons? Someone who seemed to be always looking for a reason to be nasty? Did that person's family walk on eggshells around him, and even come to blame themselves for causing his anger? Did the family, in fact, enable him to terrorize them and even pathetically continue trying to gain his approval?

The protagonist of this short novel, Michael Moran, is just such a man. His family, the author writes, "...had learned to accept him in all his humours; they were grateful for anything short of his worst moods, inordinately grateful for the slightest goodwill....Everybody was watchful here. It was like moving about in a war area."

As in real life, some of the children in this fictional family try to escape the toxic situation. The oldest son leaves home and never returns. The youngest son also leaves but does return for visits, although he never again allows his father to intimidate him. The three daughters and the stepmother, however, continue to cater to the father, even allowing him to dictate the courses of their adult lives.

McGahern implies that one reason for the father's bullying behavior is his embitterment over the corruption of the country for which he fought as a member of the Irish Republican Army. Some literary critics, according to the book jacket blurbs, see this novel as a metaphor for the situation of the Irish people. It seems more likely to me that it is just what it seems, a sensitive and sympathetic look at the love-hate relationships in a dysfunctional family.

McGahern's writing style is straightforward and sparse, with a distinctive rhythm. He is highly regarded in Ireland, and this novel is considered his masterpiece.