false 25937251 873780 82955 0452263948 9780452263949 28 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171033703m/82955.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/82955.The_Country_Girls_Trilogy_and_Epilogue 3.76 217 The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue is an absolutely engaging saga that is, thematically, about opposites - opposite dispositions and opposite views of life, the survivor versus the ungovernable romantic. It charts unflinchingly the pattern of life, for women, from the high spirits of youth to the chill of middle age, from hope to despair. It is both painful and hilarious.
</div>]]> 7184 3.62 1247 200 5 1 false Mon Jun 30 13:00:04 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 30 13:04:13 -0700 2008 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 repercussions in a way that is graphic, frank and utterly unheard of in conservative, “priest-plagued” Ireland. Her first three novels follow the adventures of Caithleen and Baba as they flee their convent school in rural Ireland, find considerably older husbands in Dublin, and confront their failed marriages in London. Along the way, the girls conceive out of wedlock, have extramarital affairs and contract venereal disease.

Read the rest of Jim Ruland's article on Edna O'Brien here:
http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/...

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