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A Scandalous Woman and Other Stories
Very good in very good dust jacket (bookplate.) Hardcover first edition - New Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,, 1974.. Hardcover first edition -. Very good in very good dust jacket (bookplate.). First US printing. A collection of 9 short stories.
151 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
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208 people want to read
About the author
Edna O'Brien
115 books1,385 followersEdna O’Brien was an award-winning Irish author of novels, plays, and short stories. She has been hailed as one of the greatest chroniclers of the female experience in the twentieth century. She was the 2011 recipient of the Frank O’Connor Prize, awarded for her short story collection Saints and Sinners. She also received, among other honors, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin, and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Literary Academy. Her 1960 debut novel, The Country Girls, was banned in her native Ireland for its groundbreaking depictions of female sexuality. Notable works also include August Is a Wicked Month (1965), A Pagan Place (1970), Lantern Slides (1990), and The Light of Evening (2006). O’Brien lived in London until her death.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 14, 2021
So, four stories were really good to excellent, one was good, and the other 3, in my opinion, were fair-to-middling. 3.5 stars which when rounding as we all knows will be elevated to 4 stars 😊
• A Scandalous Woman – 5 stars [I am enthralled with her story telling. This was humorous but also a bit sad. A young woman not quite 18 gets pregnant, the father of the to-be-born child is forced by her parents to marry her. She then temporarily goes insane, but then 10 years later is helping her husband run a general store. Just a superb story. Originally published in The New Yorker, September 22, 1974.]
• Over – 3 stars [Similar to a story from another collection of hers “The Love Object and Other Stories”. It was the eponymous story, ‘The Love Object’, that reminded me of the movie Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas. A woman falls in love with a younger man who is cohabiting with another woman and their son, and woman in love cannot or will not get over it.]
• The Favorite – 4 stars [This was another one of those O’Brien stories where after reading it I don’t think I got “the point”, but the writing was so good and the story so interesting that I could only find slight fault with the story overall.]
• Creature – 4 stars
• Honeymoon – 4 stars [What a bizarre, humorous, but then sad ending. Reminded me of her story from another collection, Tough Men (in her short story collection ‘Returning’), but that one was overall uproariously funny.]
• A Journey – 3.5 stars
• Sisters – 3 stars [A truly bizarre story. Father and mother go out of town to some horse event, leaving their daughters and a son to fend for themselves. I can’t tell what events were fantastical (one sister was supposedly flying around the kitchen as in levitating) and what was real. Brother was mentioned early on in story and then was not mentioned again. Fairly uneven story.]
• Love Child – 2 stars [Another bizarre story. Not too fond of it.]
• The House of My Dreams – 2.5 stars
Notes
• Four of the stories were in a larger collection of Edna O’Brien short stories published in 1984, A Fanatic Heart.
• ‘Honeymoon’ was originally published in Cosmopolitan. Most of the other stories had been previously published in the New Yorker, with the exception of ‘A Scandalous Woman’ and ‘Sisters’ which had not been published elsewhere.
Reviews:
• http://freerangereading.blogspot.com/...
• https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim... (written by Julia O’Faolain)
• A Scandalous Woman – 5 stars [I am enthralled with her story telling. This was humorous but also a bit sad. A young woman not quite 18 gets pregnant, the father of the to-be-born child is forced by her parents to marry her. She then temporarily goes insane, but then 10 years later is helping her husband run a general store. Just a superb story. Originally published in The New Yorker, September 22, 1974.]
• Over – 3 stars [Similar to a story from another collection of hers “The Love Object and Other Stories”. It was the eponymous story, ‘The Love Object’, that reminded me of the movie Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas. A woman falls in love with a younger man who is cohabiting with another woman and their son, and woman in love cannot or will not get over it.]
• The Favorite – 4 stars [This was another one of those O’Brien stories where after reading it I don’t think I got “the point”, but the writing was so good and the story so interesting that I could only find slight fault with the story overall.]
• Creature – 4 stars
• Honeymoon – 4 stars [What a bizarre, humorous, but then sad ending. Reminded me of her story from another collection, Tough Men (in her short story collection ‘Returning’), but that one was overall uproariously funny.]
• A Journey – 3.5 stars
• Sisters – 3 stars [A truly bizarre story. Father and mother go out of town to some horse event, leaving their daughters and a son to fend for themselves. I can’t tell what events were fantastical (one sister was supposedly flying around the kitchen as in levitating) and what was real. Brother was mentioned early on in story and then was not mentioned again. Fairly uneven story.]
• Love Child – 2 stars [Another bizarre story. Not too fond of it.]
• The House of My Dreams – 2.5 stars
Notes
• Four of the stories were in a larger collection of Edna O’Brien short stories published in 1984, A Fanatic Heart.
• ‘Honeymoon’ was originally published in Cosmopolitan. Most of the other stories had been previously published in the New Yorker, with the exception of ‘A Scandalous Woman’ and ‘Sisters’ which had not been published elsewhere.
Reviews:
• http://freerangereading.blogspot.com/...
• https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim... (written by Julia O’Faolain)
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April 23, 2024only read "a scandalous woman".
ouch, just...ouch.
ouch, just...ouch.
March 28, 2010
The copy I bought in Oxfam has a '70s cover with a photo of a nude lady looking wistfully out of a window. And someone's scribbled over the breasts with a biro.
Which is quite apt, as the stories' central themes are the prudish, oppressive Ireland of yore and the suppression of female sexuality.
Which is quite apt, as the stories' central themes are the prudish, oppressive Ireland of yore and the suppression of female sexuality.
June 6, 2024
"She fell in love, or rather, she fell into rebellion, which took the form of love."
January 28, 2015
Hello to Catholic Ireland with all its cruelty and beauty , the sex, the booze and the mysticism of poverty. O'Brien's narrative has something of a fairy tale told next to a crackling log fire.
I love the hot whiskeys and teas served throughout the short stories and how in 'The Journey' "they dived into the basket of bread, calling for butter, butter."; I love how "The Sisters" in their hunger hallucinate over: "cakes, fairy cakes, orange cakes, plum cakes, madeira cakes; warm bread on trays; custards with a beautiful thin skin on them; boiled bacon soft and juicy and still pink; apples stewed to a warm brown; pears stewed in their own syrup; bowls of potato salad with hard-boiled eggs and scallions added for the flavour." I love the sensuality,the catholic paraphernalia ("Her rosary beads, white mother of pearl, had been blessed at Lourdes"), the Irishness of O'Brien's prose and the way she laconically describes deceit and heart-break:
"He got to know the things she liked – coconut creams, ham paste and gin and lime. He would devise little picnics for her, bringing small jars of paste, biscuits sandwiched together, and the gin and lime in a washed- out blue magnesia bottle. When it transpired that he was a married man, she ended it as neatly as it had begun, and the only sign that her flatmates saw was that she took no supper and spent one whole day and one whole night in bed, eyes shut but not asleep."
Oh and by the way, I also got the paperback edition with the tits on it, although my cover wasn't - fortunately enough victim of a school boy prank and not vandalized by a prepubescent twat.
I love the hot whiskeys and teas served throughout the short stories and how in 'The Journey' "they dived into the basket of bread, calling for butter, butter."; I love how "The Sisters" in their hunger hallucinate over: "cakes, fairy cakes, orange cakes, plum cakes, madeira cakes; warm bread on trays; custards with a beautiful thin skin on them; boiled bacon soft and juicy and still pink; apples stewed to a warm brown; pears stewed in their own syrup; bowls of potato salad with hard-boiled eggs and scallions added for the flavour." I love the sensuality,the catholic paraphernalia ("Her rosary beads, white mother of pearl, had been blessed at Lourdes"), the Irishness of O'Brien's prose and the way she laconically describes deceit and heart-break:
"He got to know the things she liked – coconut creams, ham paste and gin and lime. He would devise little picnics for her, bringing small jars of paste, biscuits sandwiched together, and the gin and lime in a washed- out blue magnesia bottle. When it transpired that he was a married man, she ended it as neatly as it had begun, and the only sign that her flatmates saw was that she took no supper and spent one whole day and one whole night in bed, eyes shut but not asleep."
Oh and by the way, I also got the paperback edition with the tits on it, although my cover wasn't - fortunately enough victim of a school boy prank and not vandalized by a prepubescent twat.
April 23, 2024
Sometimes one finds oneself in the swim, one is wanted, one is favored, one is privy, one is caught up in another's destiny that is far more exciting than one's own.
(this is a review of A Scandalous Woman only!)
A Scandalous Woman is an extremely different look at Irish culture from the point of view of a woman - which I haven’t read until now -, especially focusing on things such as tradition, what society expects, and how people fight for their own freedom. O'Brien paints a really detailed picture of what life was like in Ireland at that time, as Eily goes against what people think she should do and tries to find herself - she eventually goes through a transformation, moving from being seen as a good woman, the madonna, to someone who's seen as scandalous, the hag figure suggested by the witch, whom she comes to resemble, which mirrors a common theme in Irish folklore and mythology.
(this is a review of A Scandalous Woman only!)
A Scandalous Woman is an extremely different look at Irish culture from the point of view of a woman - which I haven’t read until now -, especially focusing on things such as tradition, what society expects, and how people fight for their own freedom. O'Brien paints a really detailed picture of what life was like in Ireland at that time, as Eily goes against what people think she should do and tries to find herself - she eventually goes through a transformation, moving from being seen as a good woman, the madonna, to someone who's seen as scandalous, the hag figure suggested by the witch, whom she comes to resemble, which mirrors a common theme in Irish folklore and mythology.
May 8, 2025
Läste denna på svenska, "Mina minnens hus", redan i tonåren. Blev genast en favorit.
Inte lika stor favorit 20 år senare, men tillräckligt bra för att fastna i minnet.
Inte lika stor favorit 20 år senare, men tillräckligt bra för att fastna i minnet.
November 3, 2024
I lucked into this hardcover, very clean first edition for only $3. It's priceless. Edna, I confess I'd written you off as yet another British Isles tea and crumpet queen of boredom. I'd read maybe one or two of your stories in the New Yorker and they just seemed so overwritten and dull. How wrong I was!
Edna O'Brien was one tough broad, unsentimental and edgy. Too edgy for Ireland at the time, it appears. She was also beautiful. Those eyes! But it's the writing, the sentences that just won me over immediately. I ordered her collected stories but will never part with this volume. She is unsparing in her excoriation of men and their entitlement. A writer for TODAY if there ever was one. The patriarchy is finally getting its karmic payback but there's little to compare with the Irish Catholic Patriarchy save perhaps extremist Islamic law and the current MAGA madness (which is largely led by Catholic moralists).
I needed to read this and cherish it. As do many others.
Edna O'Brien was one tough broad, unsentimental and edgy. Too edgy for Ireland at the time, it appears. She was also beautiful. Those eyes! But it's the writing, the sentences that just won me over immediately. I ordered her collected stories but will never part with this volume. She is unsparing in her excoriation of men and their entitlement. A writer for TODAY if there ever was one. The patriarchy is finally getting its karmic payback but there's little to compare with the Irish Catholic Patriarchy save perhaps extremist Islamic law and the current MAGA madness (which is largely led by Catholic moralists).
I needed to read this and cherish it. As do many others.
August 26, 2021
1974. [gave it away]
Happened to have this volume on my shelves. Many of these 9 stories do not speak to me, and the last one especially [The house of my dreams] confuses me a lot, very impressionistic. But the longish title story is a detailed persuasive story set in her childhood locale.
As with the stories in the other volume of hers I read, there is a whole lot of longing and disappointment in these.
"I was happy to read the review [sent by Ian] of a recent book by Edna O'Brien! Actually I don't think I had ever read anything of hers. Discovering I had two volumes of her short stories, I commenced reading them.
She writes winningly. The reviewer mentions her 'lyricism' and 'reliable specificity'. Also that she gives good interviews.
It's right about the interviews. I listened to a couple on YouTube and she is lovely to listen to, what she says, and just her voice.
'Edna O'Brien's illuminating short stories'
is one such interview [half an hour].
The daily life in rural and small-town Ireland she describes in some of her stories is in some ways quite unknown to me. As are quite a lot of the words she uses, for items of clothing, food, and so on.
She says in an interview that writing is about Emotions, and she does indeed evoke emotions of many kinds in her stories. Quite shocking and depressing things happen to some of her characters.
I can see how The New Yorker would like her writing. Believe she says in an interview that it seemed impossible to predict which stories of hers the NY would want. She would send one in, and have no idea why they would or wouldn't want it."
Happened to have this volume on my shelves. Many of these 9 stories do not speak to me, and the last one especially [The house of my dreams] confuses me a lot, very impressionistic. But the longish title story is a detailed persuasive story set in her childhood locale.
As with the stories in the other volume of hers I read, there is a whole lot of longing and disappointment in these.
"I was happy to read the review [sent by Ian] of a recent book by Edna O'Brien! Actually I don't think I had ever read anything of hers. Discovering I had two volumes of her short stories, I commenced reading them.
She writes winningly. The reviewer mentions her 'lyricism' and 'reliable specificity'. Also that she gives good interviews.
It's right about the interviews. I listened to a couple on YouTube and she is lovely to listen to, what she says, and just her voice.
'Edna O'Brien's illuminating short stories'
is one such interview [half an hour].
The daily life in rural and small-town Ireland she describes in some of her stories is in some ways quite unknown to me. As are quite a lot of the words she uses, for items of clothing, food, and so on.
She says in an interview that writing is about Emotions, and she does indeed evoke emotions of many kinds in her stories. Quite shocking and depressing things happen to some of her characters.
I can see how The New Yorker would like her writing. Believe she says in an interview that it seemed impossible to predict which stories of hers the NY would want. She would send one in, and have no idea why they would or wouldn't want it."
July 29, 2019
I was up in Maine, and I found this on one of my mom’s bookshelves and read the title story. I had somehow never read her before. The writing reminds me of Live Storytelling, squeezing half a lifetime of key events into just a few pages.
The story is told in a plain and everyday sort of style, with the author delighting in everything society labels “bad” and mourning everything society considers “good.” Wonderful storytelling that illuminates the lives of bright female spirits hindered by a conservative and male-dominated society.
The story is told in a plain and everyday sort of style, with the author delighting in everything society labels “bad” and mourning everything society considers “good.” Wonderful storytelling that illuminates the lives of bright female spirits hindered by a conservative and male-dominated society.
December 26, 2013
I read these engrossing stories in my 20s and felt kinship with O'Brien's realistically painted heroines and anti-heroines.
August 28, 2019
Enjoyed most of the stories, a couple not so much but overall I think I will read more of Enda O'brien.
October 17, 2021
A selection of short stories with a dual theme of Ireland and women being central to the stories. In the title story A Scandalous Woman we learn the price to be paid for taking sexual risks with Eily being locked up and married off to a very unwilling bridegroom. In "Sisters" we learn of the cruelty Helen the favoured older sister inflicts on her younger sisters, basically starving them whilst her parents are away. Edna O'Brien shows the drama and emotional cruelty shown within families. It was at times painful reading these sad stories.
February 1, 2021
...left at 50% (...first default of the 2021)
May 28, 2024
Edna can do no wrong
August 27, 2023
Very well written. The author has talent, I can tell. However, is not that kind of book I would recommend or read again. Sanctimonous-like spirit is found anywhere through the pages, along with quite some pessimism.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews