She's had an outsize life to match her outsize talent.'- Dwight Garner, New York Times O'Brien has long and correctly been recognized as among the greatest Irish writers of the 20th century. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as a celebrated writer and the guest of Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton.Ĭountry Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime. Starting with O’Brien’s birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the ’60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. Country Girl brings us face-to-face with a life of high drama and contemplation. O’Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. When Edna O’Brien’s first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O’Briens’ local parish that the book was burned by its priest. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as a celebrated writer and the guest of Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton.Ĭountry Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime.“Country Girl is Edna O’Brien’s exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life.”-National Public Radio Starting with O'Brien's birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the '60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. O'Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. When Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest.

'Country Girl is Edna O'Brien's exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life.'-National Public Radio

Country Girl by Edna O'Brien