Edna O'Brien's beloved classics plunge us into the lives and loves of two girls in rural 1950s Ireland (with a new foreword by Eimear McBride).
ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD'
Caithleen 'Kate' Brady and Bridget 'Baba' Brennan are growing up in a repressive Irish village after World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a reckless survivor. After being expelled from convent school, they dream of the bright lights of Dublin - and are rewarded with bad luck and bad sex; marry for the wrong reasons; but continue to fight the expectations forced upon 'girls' of every era to become brave new women.
Edna O'Brien's debut novels revolutionised Irish literature in the 1960s. Banned by the authorities as 'indecent' and burned by the clergy, they were notorious for their frank portrayal of sexual desire: but scandal turned to fame, and made this glorious coming-of-age tale an instant classic that inspires and delights readers to this day.
'The taboo-breaking, the fabulous prose - there's no one like Edna O'Brien.' Anne Enright 'Surprising and beautiful and courageous .. A beacon.' Megan Nolan 'Brilliant and brave.' Ann Patchett 'Glittering energy.' Colm Tóibìn
Author
About Edna O'Brien, Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brien wrote more than twenty celebrated works of fiction, including her classic The Country Girls Trilogy, as well as plays and four works of non-fiction, which have been translated internationally into over 30 territories. Her final novel was the acclaimed Girl, which was awarded the Kerry Group Prize for Fiction in 2020. She was the recipient of many awards, including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Arts Gold Medal, the Frank O'Connor Prize, the PEN/Nabokov Award For Achievement in International Literature, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature, as well as being appointed an honorary Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 2018. In 2021, O'Brien was also awarded the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, she lived in London for many years before her death on 27th July 2024.
