The Irish novel has demonstrated an ability to sample other forms and influences, to improvise and evolve in the light of changing circumstances. Peter Guy’s new study helps investigate the way in which Irish writers since the sixties have responded to these influences, re-examining their work through the theory of the French theorist Jacques Lacan.

Focusing on the novelists John McGahern, Brian Moore and John Broderick in a simultaneous reading, and applying a psychoanalytical theory which centers in particular on gender and family relations, this new study also covers a number of other complex issues, issues which span the claustrophobic and repressive atmosphere of the 1950s to the secular ahistorical Ireland of today.