Edna O'Brien is the author of The Country Girls trilogy, The Light of Evening, The Love Object, and many other acclaimed books. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, O'Brien has lived in London for many years.
"Demure reflections on her celebrated literary life well lived
comprise this lovely memoir....O'Brien always returns to the
enduring heart of her writing."-Publishers Weekly (starred
review)
Praise for Country Girl "Ms. O'Brien has long and correctly been
recognized as among the greatest Irish writers of the 20th century.
She's had an outsize life to match her outsize talent."--Dwight
Garner, New York Times
"Country Girl is a book of magics, truths, stories, and quiet
immensity. No one else could have written it, and no one else could
have lived it."-Andrew O'Hagan, author of Be Near Me
"A wonderful, lively memoir."-Katie Roiphe, Slate.com
"After dazzling readers and reviewers around the world for decades,
O'Brien, now 82, finally turns her attention to her own life.
Country Girl is as dramatic as any novel."-O, the Oprah
Magazine
"Edna O'Brien had to exile herself, like Joyce and Beckett, to
become herself. Mad Ireland hurt her into prose the way Auden said
it had hurt Yeats into poetry....Literature-O'Brien's most faithful
companion, her deepest faith-brings what consolation it can. She
returns the favor by adding her extravagant lyricism to its
trove."-Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times
"Edna O'Brien has made of her memories something of both precision
and depth, a book that, letting us see her as she was, jumps with
an all-consuming curiosity from one lucidly narrated event to
another."--Philip Roth
"Edna O'Brien, for whom the word 'redoubtable' may well have been
coined, has lived a long and quite remarkable life...Anyone who
knows and loves her work, as I do, will want to read Country Girl
from start to finish."-Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
"Edna O'Brien's Country Girl shimmers with heart, soul and literary
brilliance."-Nancy R. Ives, Library Journal
"Flashes of prodigious beauty and power."--Hilary Mantel
"Get ready to applaud, ladies and gentlemen, because there is no
one like her. O'Brien, in her 80s, may look like an icon and talk
like an icon, but she writes like the thing itself, with prose that
is scrupulous and lyrical, beautiful and exact...."-Anne Enright,
Guardian (UK)
"In Country Girl there is great honesty and struggle, and joy and
sorrow leaping together--pure life!"--Alice Munro
"In prose as lyrical and exacting as any in O'Brien's fiction,
Country Girl evokes both the solitariness and the adventure of a
life devoted to writing."--Megan O'Grady, Vogue
"O'Brien is skilled at snatching triumph from
melancholy....Thrilling, sensuous, unblinking."-Lisa Shea, Elle
"O'Brien's account of her life is completely irresistible."--Kate
Tuttle, Boston Globe
"O'Brien's religion has been literature; to it she has remained
devout, with a fervor that is contagious...She is no saint. She is
an icon."--Stacy Schiff, New York Times Book Review
"The doyenne of contemporary Irish letters did not enjoy a
straight-line rise to international fame and critical regard. .
.Now, of course, O'Brien's fiction (brilliant short stories as well
as novels) is seen for what it always was, richly illuminating and,
yes, candid depictions of women's needs and desires, rendered with
no sentimentality or salaciousness. . . .Her book is a beautifully
expressed testament to a writer's tenacity."-Brad Hooper, Booklist
(starred review)
"This is a big, robust life, and though one might come for the
literary gossip, the lucid prose and sharp insight command one's
attention. It's with good reason that this memoir has been placed
on so many lists of best books of 2013...We're in the thrall of one
of the most beguiling and resilient contemporary writers, a stylist
and a survivor...through it all, she's an exuberant literary
pioneer." -Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune (Editor's Choice)
"We follow O'Brien through convent school, love affairs,
motherhood, the banning of her books, and her working years in
London and New York. Along the way, we encounter G�nter Gras,
Joseph Brodsky, Jackie Onassis, and other luminaries. O'Brien
beautifully renders her remarkably rich life, her 'many me's.'"-The
New Yorker
"When sex fails you, there's always gossip. An excellent memoir,
Country Girl provided it in shedloads, along with some moral
seriousness to boot."-Louise Doughty, Observer (UK)
"You must suffer to become yourself, and it doesn't get easier. I
took heart from Country Girl, both as the self-portrait of a great
prose stylist, and an exemplary female survivor."--Judith Thurman,
"Best Books of 2012," The New Yorker
O'Brien's (A Fanatic Heart) memoir chronicles her journey from the Catholic restraints of her childhood in Ireland to her success as a prolific writer. In 1960, O'Brien shocked Ireland with her debut novel, The Country Girls, a sexually outspoken story about young women in love whose needs often conflict with those of their male counterparts. This led to strong disapproval from the Irish Catholic community. Yet her writing found an appreciative audience in the wider world. She lived the Swinging Sixties life in London, taking LSD and hanging out with such celebrities as Paul McCartney, Robert Mitchum, and Sean Connery, furthering her reputation as a wild, unconventional woman. VERDICT While O'Brien overly devotes her time to cataloguing the notable actors, writers, and politicians of her acquaintance, the accounts of her childhood and her descriptions of Ireland soar with a lyricism reminiscent of Joyce. Recommended for memoir lovers and readers with a desire for more insight into this important 20th-century literary figure.-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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