May 2011 Guest Editor Carol Drinkwater on House of Splendid Isolation...
Educated at an Irish convent, I was a lonely, frustrated girl who dreamed of escape, of becoming an actress. The early works of Edna O’Brien – her Country Girls trilogy – helped me to understand that my passions, my desire to live, to love were not uncommon. Her later works are magnificent. House of Splendid Isolation is my personal favourite.
History is everywhere. It seeps into the soil, the sub-soil. Like rain, or hail, or snow, or blood.Josie O'Grady is an elderly woman, living alone in her dilapidated big house on the outskirts of a rural Irish village. Then one day her bedroom door swings open to reveal McGreevy, an IRA terrorist on a bloody crusade, who has chosen her isolated house for sanctuary. As days pass, these two outsiders develop a grudging respect for each other, which grows into affection and friendship, but the police net is closing in and, with dawning horror, Josie starts to suspect that McGreevy is not only using her house as a refuge.Based on interviews with the IRA leader Dominic McGlinchy in Portlaoise Prison and published four years before the Good Friday Agreement, this thrilling, political, poetic novel is a portrait of the state of the Irish nation at the height of the Troubles.
| Primary Genre | General Fiction |
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History is everywhere. It seeps into the soil, the sub-soil.
House of Splendid Isolation features in the following genres: General Fiction, eBooks of the Month, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Paperback. £8.99, down from the £9.99 cover price. In Stock.
House of Splendid Isolation was written by Edna O'Brien and published by Faber & Faber
House of Splendid Isolation has 256 pages
£8.99, reduced from £9.99. In Stock.
