Edna O’Brien – Cannonball Read 17

“Life was a bitch. Love was also a bitch.”

The Country Girls: Three Novels and an Epilogue by Edna O'Brien

July 27, 2022 by tiny_bookbot Leave a Comment

CBR14 Bingo: Scandal “But we want young men. Romance. Love and things,” I said, despondently. Edna O’Brien is kind of a giant in Irish fiction, so it was kind of embarrassing, really, that I hadn’t read any of her work before this summer. (Yes, this is another installment in my Summer of Irish Fiction.) She’s now in her nineties and only recently retired, and she’s published steadily ever since her first novel, Country Girl (included in this volume), which came out in 1960 and immediately scandalized […]

Playing catsup

Several Short Sentences about Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich

Girl by Edna O'Brien

You'll Never Believe what Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

August 20, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Several Short Sentences about Writing – 4/5 Stars I find this small book to be a very clear, direct, and helpful book about writing. As a writing teacher, I find that students generally are unimpressed with the idea that the only way to learn how to write is to write, get feedback, work on writing and go from there. Students want a frame and format to plug in sentences and go from there. That’s not exactly true for students who are more natural in their […]

Mary hoped that the rotted front tire would not burst.

The Love Object by Edna O'Brien

July 5, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

A long, but curated story collection by the Irish writer Edna O’Brien, who like many who came before her (and I think Mavis Gallant is the best analog more so than an Alice Munro) split a lot of her time writing short fiction cataloging both the local from her own life and the international or cosmopolitan in her travels as a writer. In the opening introduction by John Banville, she is compared to Henry James in her international sensibility, and there’s not much to find […]

“I did not know why my heart was beating faster than usual. Then I remembered. The old reason.”

January 4, 2018 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Country Girls Trilogy The Country Girls Book one of three. This book exudes charm. It’s about two friends growing up in rural Ireland and sort of waiting on the cusp of their lives to start. Caithleen is rambunctious and energetic and sexually charged, even in her teens, and dreams of running off to the “big city” for her education and her adventures. Whereas Bridget is more staid and safe. They both end up in school, have some minor misadventures, and come home in their […]

Unluck of the Irish

October 9, 2014 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls Trilogy was originally released as three separate novels: The Country Girls (1960), The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). This collected edition from 1986 includes an Epilogue as well, rounding out the story of two Irish girls who grow up, fall in and out of love, and get involved in bad relationships in the 1950s/early 1960s. O’Brien’s writing is a delight to read. She mixes humor with sadness and tragedy. Caithleen Brady (Kate) and Bridget Brennan (Baba) […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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