The acclaimed author describes her convent school education in Ireland, the scandal that ensued upon the publication of her first novel, and the wild 1960s parties that introduced her to people from all walks of life.
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Edna O'Brien is rightly famous as a writer of lyric prose, and though she is most known for her short stories and novels, the brilliance of her language is on full display here. The book is more autobiography than memoir; she writes in the late evening of a full life, begins with her birth, and ends the book alone in her living room, in the present moment. In between is the life of an Irish writer, whose great heritage and responsibility is to language. It's also the life of a member of the generation of women artists who went from an utterly stifling middle-class world to the swinging Sixties (Chelsea school), and discovered in the midst of all that liberation that a woman's work might get her in the doors of the very best parties, but it would not get either artist or work evaluated on their own merits. That came later, after the scandals. The book has the quiet, unsentimental honesty of a writer who has successfully waited it out. She has the same capacity for detachment as Joan Didion, and uses it to observe her own beginnings as an artist, a mother, and a human being as an example of how little the flower of youth has any idea what it's doing, and the difference between worthwhile and useless suffering. Along the way, O'Brien found pursuing clarity of vision and language was more useful than being known as either a good girl or a cause célébre, and more compelling than her church, men, or fame. Readers of this book are likely to agree. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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