3 Review(s)

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. 'Edna O'Brien writes the most beautiful, aching stories of any writer, anywhere.' Alice Munro A woman walks the streets of Manhattan and contemplates with exquisite longing the precarious affair she has embarked on, amidst the grandeur and cacophony of the cityscape; a young Irish girl and her mother are thrilled to be invited to visit the glamorous Coughlan's but find - for all the promise of their green gorgette, silver shoes and fancy dinner parties - they leave disappointed; an Irishman in north London retraces his life as a young lad with his mates digging the streets and dreaming of the apocryphal gold, an outside both in Ireland and England, yet he carries the lodestar of his native land. A collection characterised by all of Edna O'Brien's trademark lyricism, powerful evocations of place and a glorious and an often heart-breaking grasp of people and their desires and contradictions. Her stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.