Hello Gentle Reader,
In 2015, the then Irish President, Michael D Higgins, bestowed on Edna O’Brien the countries highest creative arts honour, the Saoi of Aosdána, referring to Edna O’Brien as a “fearless teller of truth,” high praise from the president and country, which only decades before often had a contested even strained relationship with the writer. At times, O’Brien’s work suffered publication bans and censorship. A few parishes even conducted their own book burnings. Born to a large Catholic family, Edna O’Brien remarked that her early life was marked by the usual Irish condition of the time, austerity coupled Catholic sanctioned poverty. Her father’s family fortune was squandered by his gambling compulsions and alcoholism; while her mothers strength kept the house in order and the wolves at bay. Irish society—much like her childhood home—was marked by an atmosphere of control be it parental, marital, or religious in its incarnation. Its chokehold was ever present subjecting and suffocating. Edna O’Brien gained notoriety with her debut novel “The Country Girls,” detailing the rural oppression and squalor of Irish country life, and realities of girls, their thoughts, their dreams, their desires. The frankness in which sex was discussed and written about scandalized Irish society, and endeared Edna O’Brien to readers abroad. Subsequent novels continued to examine and dissect Irish society and continue to push the Irish experience from a feminine perspective to the forefront of literary discourse, expanding the literary perspective and providing a fuller portrait of the human and Irish condition. Despite this, O’Brien’s relationship with Ireland would be noticeably strained for some years. It would be disingenuous and limiting to think of Edna O’Brien as only limited to the female perspective and view of Irish life. An engaged humanist, O’Brien trained turned her pen to perspectives and stories outside of her own. “The Little Red Chairs,” heralded as a masterpiece by many, recounts the immigration of an imagined Eastern European war criminal to a rural Irish countryside. The once provincial backwater of the Irish countryside is now reimagined as a place of mixed immigration, granting O’Brien the ability to provide commentary on a variety of issues, such as forced emigration and suffrage of women (a perennial theme). “Girl,” her last published novel, departs to a more international level of concern, imagining the experience of the girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram. The novel reaffirms Edna O’Brien as a writer of ideal and humanistic strength, who recounts both the horror and the tenderness of the human experience, and one girl’s unshaken resilience to continue on, even after the abduction and the abandonment of society at large. Edna O’Brien was a fierce and uncompromising writer, whose style was equally matched by her literary perspectives, she is truly one of Ireland’s greatest contemporary writers, who undoubtfully has influenced the direction of Irish literature, but also introduced new areas of discourse and discussions.
Rest in Peace, Edna O’Brien.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
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