Edna O'Brien
2) Girl
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Language
English
Description
So begins Girl, Edna O'Brien's harrowing portrayal of the young women abducted by Boko Haram. Set in the deep countryside of northeast Nigeria, this is a brutal story of incarceration, horror, and hunger; a hair-raising escape into the manifold terrors of the forest; and a descent into the labyrinthine bureaucracy and hostility awaiting a victim who returns home with a child blighted by enemy blood. From one of the century's greatest living authors,...
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English
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Description
The thirty-one stories collected in this volume provide, among other things, a cumulative portrait of Ireland, seen from within and without. Coming of age, the impact of class, and familial and romantic love are the prevalent motifs, along with the instinct toward escape and subsequent nostalgia for home. Some of the stories are linked and some carry O'Brien's distinct sense of the comical. In "A Rose in the Heart of New York," the single-mindedness...
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English
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Description
Time and Tide is a fragmented novel detailing the loves and catastrophes-and catastrophic loves-of Nell, an Irish woman trying to make a life for herself in the literary world of London.
"A whimsical beauty who has swapped the suffocating narrowness of her native land for the loveless brutality of England" (The Independent), Nell is in flight from bitter, controlling, and small-minded parents, yet risks becoming just such a mother to her own sons....
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English
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Description
House of Splendid Isolation is a newly reissued novel from Edna O’Brien, the author of Girl—“one of the most celebrated writers in the English language” (NPR’s Weekend Edition).
The heartbreaking dilemmas and the noble and bloody history of Ireland come vividly to life in the tale of Josie, a widow living in a solitary house outside an Irish village, whose home becomes the hideout of an IRA terrorist.
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English
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Description
O'Brien takes her reader into the mind of Michen O'Kane, a murder who terrorizes the countryside of western Ireland, and traces his transformation from a neglected child to a twisted killer. In the Forest is based on a true story of local horror, and O'Brien provides fragments of O'Kane's story while leaving her reader to try and make sense of his psyche.
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English
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Description
In twelve stories peopled with deeply etched characters, whom we come to know instantly and intimately, Lantern Slides reveals the wit and passion of a master of the short fiction form. Rich and humorous, full of struggle and boldness, these stories are a singular reflection of Edna O'Brien's artistry.
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English
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Description
Down by the River is a newly reissued novel from Edna O’Brien, the author of Girl—“one of the most celebrated writers in the English language” (NPR’s Weekend Edition).
Set in the author’s native Ireland, a powerful and passionate novel about a young girl who becomes pregnant by her father—a situation made worse when it becomes fodder for the gossip mill of church, state, and the town square.
12) Wild Decembers
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English
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Description
Wild Decembers charts the quick and critical demise of relations between Joseph Brennan and Mick Bugler-"the warring sons of warring sons"-in the countryside of Western Ireland. With her inimitable gift for describing the occasions of heartbreak, O'Brien brings Joseph's live for his land to the level of his sister Breege's love for both him and his rival, Bugler. Breege sees "the wrong of years and the recent wrongs" fuel each other as Bugler comes...
Author
Language
English
Description
Three women (mistress, wife, and daughter) uncover their passion for the same man and confront the ways that love can simultaneously liberate and entrap. This lyrical and captivating drama weaves together their stories to construct the portrait of a man through the eyes of the women who love him.
15) Country Girls
Author
Series
Country girls trilogy volume 1
Language
English
Description
Edna O'Brien's wonderful, wild and moving novel shocked the nation on its publication in 1960. Adapted for the stage by the author, The Country Girls, the play, is a highly theatrical and free-flowing telling of this classic coming of age story.
Author
Language
English
Description
This richly peopled, compellingly readable novel explores the many lives of women-as mystic, mother, daughter, and lover. There is Iris with her "winsome wonsome" ways, no longer young; there is Charlotte, a troubled debutante who has fled from society; and there is the narrator, Anna, who feels that her emotional life has folded until she meets a young Spanish girl named Catalina.
Set in a seaside enclave on the Mediterranean coast, The High Road...