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The Country Girls Trilogy (The Country Girls Trilogy #1-3)

3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 · rating details · 627 ratings · 59 reviews

�Delicious...whollv original...sensitive as a harp string...captures the vigilance of childhood and reproduces, eerily intact, its heightened sensations.”
—Newsday

From the acclaimed author of Country Girl: A Memoir
Kate and Baba are two ambitious Irish country girls in search of life: romantic Kate seeks love, while pragmatic Baba will take whatever she can get. Together t...more

Paperback, 544 pages

Published May 1st 1987 by Plume (first published 1986)

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Nov 19, 2008 Yulia rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: women with great caution

What a roller coaster this put me on. While reading it, I was sincerely frightened for the characters and for my own fate in life, I pounded the pillow in helpless distress and needed to be comforted by Frank that, if it made me feel so much, she must be doing something right. But it was agony, not beautiful agony, but masochistic, call-your-therapist agony. The pain it induced was more than I'd bargained for. As I approached the end, I thought, this is a work I want to own, to add to my colecti...more What a roller coaster this put me on. While reading it, I was sincerely frightened for the characters and for my own fate in life, I pounded the pillow in helpless distress and needed to be comforted by Frank that, if it made me feel so much, she must be doing something right. But it was agony, not beautiful agony, but masochistic, call-your-therapist agony. The pain it induced was more than I'd bargained for. As I approached the end, I thought, this is a work I want to own, to add to my colection while is already filled in terms of shelf space. This is a book I can't forget and don't want to, like a tragic ending to the closest friendship of my life. And just an hour after finishing it, it felt as if a pillowcase that had been blinding me had been lifted. IO saw everything more clearly. How could O'Brien put me through such pain? Did she realize there was not one sympathetic male character in her entire trilogy (excepting Snowie perhaps)? Did she want women to call of romance and seek only the comfort of female friendships? Was life truly such a lost cause? Was there nothing to be gained or learned from our experiences? And now I'm left feeling deceived by her, as if I'd been caught up in a man-hating cult of abandoned women who still craved their drug.

This book was torture, good torture, then cruel torture, then unnecessary torture. I want my grounding on reality back. May no single woman in search of true companionship read this book. May no woman in a failing relationship read this, either. May no man waste his time on it. No, this book didn't end up a failure. It was sentimental, but saved by its humor, and deeply moving as only a roller coaster that has been derailed can move you.

Looking back on this destabilizing half-week experience in which I could do nothing but read this book or worry about reading on, for fear I would be further traumatized, I remember now who it was whore assured me as I cried in hopelessness or went into a panic. Yes, it was my partner, a concept that O'Brien's characters cannot fathom in this chronicle. What I'm left with is a love-hate relationship. I hate this book for torturing me as it did, but I love it for invoking such strong feelings. Thank goodness there is life outside this trilogy. If this were an accurate portrayal of human relations, I think I'd kill myself.

But my fault was in over-identifying with the literate and romantic Caithleen, even as she proceeds to lose her grip on reality. Warning: these characters are extremes. I wouldn't identify too closely with any if I could avoid it. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at dividing the literary world from the literal world.

Good luck to readers and have a supportive partner or an excellent therapist should you choose to read this. I regret recommending it to my mother.

Some lines I wanted to remember, for one reason or another (no use questioning their profundity):

"He was only a shadow now, and I remembered him the way one remembers a nice dress that one has grown out of" (p. 179, not this edition)

"I used to think of my life as a failure, purposeless . . . until I got older and became aware of things. I now know that the problem of life is not solved by success but by failure: struggle and achievement and failure, on and on" (p. 220).

"He directed documentary pictures but was always buying leisure, as if in the course of leisure he must found what he had been ordained to do" (p. 391).

"'Baba, why did you do it to me?' he said. Useless to say that I hadn't thought of him when I was doing it. Useless to say that I always thought your acquaintanceship with one person had nothing to do with another" (p. 471).

"She closed her eyes on the thought that sleeping with a man was unimportant. A nothing, if nothing in the way of love preceded it. Or resulted from it" (p. 500). (less)

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Oct 30, 2009 Gail rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lovers of Irish stories; catholics

Shelves: 2008, constant-reader, irish-themes, 2009

I've only read the first part so far; waiting for the complete edition from Amazon.

O'Brien captures perfectly, in my opinion, the era and place she is concerned with. Not as downtrodden as "Angela's Ashes" by any means, but certainly far, far from sweetness and light. The pervading sadness and sense of claustrophobia subsuming the girls' lives struck me as true to life. The Catholic upbringing and the narrowness of the girls' options reflect my memories of those days pretty well. (Of course, we...more

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Jun 30, 2008 L.A.Weekly rated it 5 of 5 stars

EDNA O'BRIEN: IRELAND'S OTHER LITERARY HEAVYWEIGHT
By Jim Ruland

O’Brien’s relationship with Ireland has always been a cantankerous one. Her first novel, The Country Girls, written in 1959 during a three-week frenzy, was condemned by the minister of culture as a “smear on Irish womanhood.” The book, which deals with the sexual awakening of a young woman from a small village in west Ireland, was promptly banned. As were her next eight novels.

The problem? O’Brien writes about sex and its repercussio...more

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Aug 09, 2008 Wilhelmina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novel

Reading this trilogy was an interesting experience for me because I read the first two books, The Country Girls and The Lonely Girl, as a teenager back in the '60s. In my opinion, those two books held up very well. Kate and Baba are best friends, although Baba frequently treats Kate, the more scholarly and sensitive girl, quite unkindly. Ultimately, the girls, later women, are the constant factor in each other's lives. Searching for a life beyond their restrictive small town life and convent sch...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Had you asked me, I would have said I already read these three book and epilogue...but I hadn't. I must have started and then put it down years ago. It is a story of two women coming of age in post WWII Ireland. I had to actually stop reading at one point and prove to myself that this was the time period because it might as well have been Ireland in the early 20th century so difficult were the strictures put on these growing girls. As in RESERVATION ROAD, a present day reader may simply not be a...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

The smartest and most hilarious possible response to the catastrophe of being born female in the rural west of Ireland at mid-century.

The trilogy actually encompasses three books – The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, and Girls in Their Married Bliss. They follow the highly intelligent but spacy Caithleen and her forcefully self-centered “best” friend Baba on a trajectory that huge numbers of Irish women’s lives took during those decades – from farm to convent school to Dublin and finally into Lo...more The smartest and most hilarious possible response to the catastrophe of being born female in the rural west of Ireland at mid-century.

The trilogy actually encompasses three books – The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, and Girls in Their Married Bliss. They follow the highly intelligent but spacy Caithleen and her forcefully self-centered “best” friend Baba on a trajectory that huge numbers of Irish women’s lives took during those decades – from farm to convent school to Dublin and finally into London. The books make no claims, however, as to their representative status. Instead, the first two books stay scrupulously grounded in the consciousness of Caithleen, our first-person narrator, who proves a good story teller, if a bad interpreter of what precisely the story means. All sorts of men crowd themselves into the orphaned Caithleen’s life, and part of the first novel’s tension comes from the judgments the reader will inevitably make about who might help Kate out and who might do her ill: judgments Caithleen seems unable to form for herself. But by the second book we’ve been served notice that our Jane-Eyre-inflected fantasies of upward mobility skew OUR perception quite badly, and it becomes apparent what Caithleen needs the chain-smoking, good-time-grabbing, light-me-a-cigarette-will-ya Baba for. What seems like Baba’s destruction of Caithleen’s chances to “make something of herself” in the first book is decidedly revealed in the second book as a narrow escape.

I was a bit apprehensive about the third book, which abandons Caithleen’s first-person narration for chapters that, when dealing with Caithleen, are written with an elegant third-person omniscience, and when dealing with Baba, are written in Baba’s voice. The Baba chapters are among the funniest in a very funny trilogy. The Caithleen chapters are a bit sad – not just because the content is sad, but because the author can no longer imagine Caithleen speaking for herself about what it’s like to be Caithleen. At some point Edna O’Brien escaped being Caithleen by becoming a world-famous author. That she doesn’t lazily award Caithleen the same ending is to her credit. That she can only approach Caithleen from the outside, using the compensations of her own much more worldly voice to bring her near us suggests something about Caithleen – or thousands of women like her – that got lost for good.

At the very end of the trilogy, Baba finds Kate reading “a newspaper article about women who for the purpose of scientific experiment had volunteered to spend a fortnight in an underground cave. Kate read: ‘Doctors in touch by telephone from an adjacent cave continue to be astonished at the physical resilience and lively spirits of the women, who were unknown to each other before the vigil began.’” And that’s pretty much what the entire trilogy is about – listening in from another cave, and discovering that even when buried underground, smothered in dark, small spaces, women keep chattering and laughing and carrying on.(less)

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Apr 04, 2011 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: semw, 1001, books, you, must, before, die, relationships, coming, of, age, classics, ireland

The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue is a compilation of three novels that span the lives of two girls, from childhood through middle age, who were both rivals and friends in rural Ireland. The first of the three novels, The Country Girls introduces us to Caithleen and Baba. Caithleen is practically raised by a single mother, her father often drunk and absent, leaving them with little or no money most days, while Baba's father is good provider who comes home every night, even if the family isn...more The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue is a compilation of three novels that span the lives of two girls, from childhood through middle age, who were both rivals and friends in rural Ireland. The first of the three novels, The Country Girls introduces us to Caithleen and Baba. Caithleen is practically raised by a single mother, her father often drunk and absent, leaving them with little or no money most days, while Baba's father is good provider who comes home every night, even if the family isn't exactly a happy one. Together they go off to a convent school, Caithleen on scholarship, Baba out of jealousy. The second book in the set, Lonely Girls (more commonly known by the name Girl With Green Eyes), picks up where the first leaves off, in Dublin, where the girls are set to start their lives. They live together as boarders, Baba to attend school, and Caithleen working in a grocery. What they are really looking for though is freedom and men, rich if Baba has anything to say about it. The final book of the series, Girls In Their Married Bliss opens with both of the girls marriages, both of them seemingly getting exactly what they wanted. Yet nothing is ever as it seems, and life still has many surprises in store for both of them.

Both the first and second book were told by Caithleen, later known as Kate, while the last of the trilogy and the epilogue are narrated by Baba. Kate was often ruled by her emotions, and though intelligent, she let her feelings blind her to common sense and reality. Baba is far more pragmatic; she is also brazen and bold, and in my opinion makes a far more interesting character, though Kate's story is richer. In the end, I quite enjoyed all of the books and I'm glad I read them together in one book, because I'm not sure that I would have made a point to continue soon after the first.

Both The Country Girls and Girl With Green Eyes can be found on the list of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, though I actually enjoyed the last book far more. The story told in Married Bliss, while much darker, was more interesting and far richer. Yet, without the first two preceding it, it couldn't have been told. These are quintessential coming-of-age stories, both realistic and tragic, telling a story that unfolds every day, in every town and city. (less)

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Apr 26, 2011 Melee rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I honestly don’t know what to say about this trilogy. I’m not even sure how I felt about it, really. I can’t say I loved these books, no; I didn’t love them. None of the characters were lovable, not even the main characters Baba and Caithleen. Yet I couldn’t help but care what happened to them. Even as I watched their lives spiral downwards, them make decision upon bad decision; nothing could’ve induced me to stop reading. It wasn’t like being unable to look away from a train wreck yet I suppose...more

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Aug 11, 2008 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Edna O'Brien catches the details of a culture and a period of time that seems like to have occurred one hundred years ago rather than in the early 1960's. She writes with an honesty and lack of sentimentality that drew me into the story and the characters. My criticisms are all minor compared to those qualities.

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Jan 28, 2010 Shayla rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-book-club

OK, technically I didn't finish this book. I read The Country Girls and part of The Lonely Girl. I met with book club and discussed this and basically learned that the book gets more and more depressing, so I don't really see the point in finishing. But I did enjoy The Country Girls and the portion of The Lonely Girl that I read. There were some nice passages and O'Brien does a good job of portraying Caithleen's life as a country girl and how what she experienced at home impacts all her decision...more

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Dec 18, 2007 gwen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up after reading an interview with Edna O'Brien, who's still alive and well and writing in London. These were her first three books, and they were beautiful and depressing and full of longing and irony.

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Apr 23, 2013 Barbara rated it 3 of 5 stars

The writing kept me going in this trilogy. I wanted to see what happened next. However this is not an uplifting book. The two Irish girls in the story continue to make the same mistakes over and over. The characters really do not blossom as they age and really nothing much good comes to them. When something potentially good comes to them they are not able to turn their fate around. Interesting descriptions of the Irish country life and London's daily encounters. If you prefer happy endings this...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Valerie added it · review of another edition

This trilogy traces the life of Kate Brady and her friend Baba (Bridget) Brennan from the rural Irish town where we meet them, to Catholic boarding school, to Dublin, and to London. The first two books (The Country Girls and The Girl with Green Eyes) are told from Kate's perspective; the last (Girls in Their Married Bliss) alternates between Kate and Baba. The first two books were my favorites (the dueling narrative voices in the last book were off-putting and the tone was more bitter). Kate is...more

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Jul 24, 2008 Jenny rated it 3 of 5 stars

That's cool, by the end it told their whole life stories. I was struck by how even though it felt like I was in-depth into the happenings, things kept progressing forward through the years, and they were growing up as I read. I definitely resonated more with Kate, and Baba was tough to handle, especially when they were younger. I had some strong reactions to both of their characters, and the choices they made. At first I was thrown off when the narrator changed, but by the end it was neat to get...more

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Feb 04, 2008 Alisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think I'd give the 1st volume 2 stars, the 2nd three, and the 3rd four. The low rating of the first is probably all my fault. I felt like I did when I read "Emma" in the 5th grade. I technically "understood" what was happening, but I didn't get it at all. I didn't know why the things people said were interesting, and I missed all the cues that revealed character. I didn't get any jokes, I didn't get anything. Sometimes I have a little trouble with the context of history, especially when it com...more

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Aug 04, 2008 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: maindishfiction

This was just the kind of book(s) I've been yearning for. It's pretty melancholy, but I love any survival themes, especially friendships that survive through time. I understand that these are O'Brien's early works, and are harbingers of the good to come, so I am eager to read some of her more mature pieces.

I've read many comments about the shift in narrator for the third book, but I really liked it and thought it was an authentic and refreshing change. Caithleen/Kate was so passive and completel...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Britt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

At this time last year I was writing a 40 page paper on autofiction, using this text as a primary source. These novels allowed me to explore the boundaries of self-awareness in literature, the malleability of memory, and the performance of femininity in 1930's Ireland.

But don't read this trilogy because I recommended it; read it because today (April 29th, 2013) The New York Times recognized Edna O'Brien's memoir among its Books of the Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/boo...

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May 09, 2013 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Pure reading pleasure. I liked the first volume, "The Country Girls," best, and found the last one "Girls in Their Married Bliss" the weakest. But they are all quite wonderful. These novels bring home how much women's lives have changed for the better, what with birth control and the possibility of economic independence. These girls didn't have a chance. All they could hope for was "married bliss," more like "married hell."

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Oct 10, 2010 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars

I liked this a whole lot--it was recommended to me by an Ireland-obsessed friend. I had some trouble getting through the third book in the trilogy and the epilogue; I will admit that even though I felt like I was supposed to be interested in Baba (based on the blurb on the inside sleeve of the book jacket), I just couldn't muster any sympathy. I thought Kate's experiences were fascinating and at times really beautifully-written. It took me a day and a half to read the first two books, and anothe...more

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Jul 06, 2010 Jgknobler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Three novels written between 1960 and 1964 about two young women from rural Ireland who leave home, meeting with varied fates. The first novel is very atmospheric with much in the way of rural poverty, alcoholism and the strictures of the Catholic church. The second explores a needy, obsessive love; and the third the contrasting lives of two no-longer-innocent friends coping in London.

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Jul 10, 2012 Kathy rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was not what I was expecting; sounded interesting from the synopsis but didn't live up to the promise. This is probably one of the few books (actually 3+ books) that I've read where I really didn't care much for either of the main characters. Just felt sad & depressed a lot of the time while reading this one .. don't think I'd recommend it.

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Apr 25, 2013 Caren rated it 5 of 5 stars

I heard a discussion on this book on NPR. I was in my car at the time and hurried home to find it. Had to buy a used book from Amazon--no digital copies. This book was written in three parts in the early 1960s. It is about two girls/women. It is funny, profound, terribly sad, so very real to the heart of women. It also gives one a view of life in Ireland in those days in both the country and in the city. Amazing story. Should be a classic.

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Jun 09, 2010 Hilary rated it 4 of 5 stars

After being disappointed with The Light of Evening, I really enjoyed this book. The story was very well written and the descriptions great. Unfortunately it really lost momentum at the very end - about the last 80 pages which was really disappointing after such a great read.

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Oct 27, 2009 Beth rated it 1 of 5 stars

I just read the first one - The Country Girls. I wasn't that into it. There were times that it felt like it was on the verge of something great, and then it would end up just disappointing. Like when Caithleen and Baba move to Dublin and they're just so full of youth and importance, renting out a little room, feeling like adults. And then they're going out with middle aged men and Caithleen is still inexplicably pining for old Mr. Gentleman and Baba never quite stops being a horrible person. And...more

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Apr 26, 2009 Mary rated it 2 of 5 stars

I heard a wonderful interview with Edna O'Brien on the World Book Club. I got the Country Girls from the library and loved the writing if not the story. I understand why it was so important for its time, but I did not love the relationship between the girls.

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May 07, 2013 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars

only picked it up because she's just published something that's getting reviewed everywhere and they all mention it. Didn't intend to read the whole trilogy but couldn't stop. Now I want to read more of her work. thinking back on it, I should have hated the main character, but I didn't. Sure sign of good writing.

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Mar 02, 2011 Harleylaw rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow, can't believe I've got to my late thirties and never read an Edna O'Brien book. Shameful. I thoroughly enjoyed this, I whizzed through the first two in no time at all and am now looking forward to reading all the other books she has written.

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Mar 31, 2009 Rubi rated it 5 of 5 stars

A hilarious book; I loved it and the portrayal of the two best friends-- as polar opposites. I'm not Irish but it certainly made me wish I were. A book that can be tender, sad, and funny all in the same sentence is quite a book.

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Feb 23, 2007 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Country Girls Trilogy is a repackaging of three separate novels (duh), and this particular edition has an epilogue. This particular edition also has a large photo of Edna O'Brien on the back cover that made me feel like I was carrying a Danielle Steele novel around, to my embarrassment. But don't let that deter you - TCGT is well worth enduring raised eyebrows from snobby literary types like me. The middle book gets a bit bogged down, but it all pays off in book three, when Baba, the charact...more

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Jun 16, 2008 Stephanie "Jedigal" rated it 2 of 5 stars

The two star rating refers just to the Epilogue, I rated the books of the Trilogy separately by their respective titles. I did not feel like the Epilogue added anything. Except more Irish depression. On the books as a whole, I cannot really say that I feel that these added anything to my personal landscape. Maybe if I were younger (had experienced less) or had read fewer things, I would not feel the same, but as it is, The Country Girls didn't add much.

For people thinking about reading some O'Br...more

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About Edna O'Brien

Edna O’Brien (b. 1930), an award-winning Irish author of novels, plays, and short stories, has been hailed as one of the greatest chroniclers of the female experience in the twentieth century. She is the 2011 recipient of the Frank O’Connor Prize, awarded for her short story collection Saints and Sinners. She has also received, among other honors, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Me...more

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Quotes from The Country Girls Trilogy

“Life, after all, was a secret with the self. The more one gave out, the less there remained for the center--that center which she coveted for herself and recognized instantly in others. Fruits had it, the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay. Some of course were flawed or hollow in there. Many, in fact. ” — 4 people liked it

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