Edna O’Brien Books In Order

The Country Girls Trilogy Books In Publication Order

  1. The Country Girls (1960)
  2. Girl with Green Eyes (1962)
  3. Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. August Is A Wicked Month (1965)
  2. Casualties of Peace (1966)
  3. Zee & Co. (1971)
  4. A Pagan Place (1971)
  5. Night (1973)
  6. Johnny I Hardly Knew You (1977)
  7. The Dazzle (1981)
  8. The Rescue (1983)
  9. The High Road (1988)
  10. On The Bone (1989)
  11. Time and Tide (1992)
  12. House of Splendid Isolation (1994)
  13. Down by the River (1997)
  14. Wild Decembers (1999)
  15. In the Forest (2002)
  16. The Light of Evening (2006)
  17. The Little Red Chairs (2015)
  18. Girl (2019)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. The Love Object (1968)
  2. Three Dublin Plays (1969)
  3. A Scandalous Woman And Other Stories (1974)
  4. Collector’s Choice (1978)
  5. A Rose in the Heart (1979)
  6. A Fanatic Heart (1984)
  7. Lantern Slides (1990)
  8. Edna O’Brien Reader (1994)
  9. Mrs. Reinhardt (1996)
  10. Irish Revel (1998)
  11. Returning (1998)
  12. Triptych and Iphigenia (2005)
  13. Saints and Sinners (2011)

Plays In Publication Order

  1. Virginia (1981)
  2. Triptych (2005)
  3. Haunted (2011)

Picture Books In Publication Order

  1. A Christmas Treat (1982)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. Shovel Kings (2009)
  2. Paradise (2019)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Mother Ireland (1976)
  2. James and Nora (1981)
  3. Vanishing Ireland (1987)
  4. James Joyce (1999)
  5. Byron in Love (2009)
  6. Country Girl (2012)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. Arabian Days (1977)
  2. Tales for the Telling (1986)
  3. New Writing From Ireland (1994)

The Country Girls Trilogy Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

Picture Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Edna O’Brien Books Overview

The Country Girls

Meet Kate and Baba, two young Irish country girls who have spent their childhood together. As they leave the safety of their convent school in search of life and love in the big city, they struggle to maintain their somewhat tumultuous relationship. Kate, dreamy and romantic, yearns for true love, while Baba just wants to experience the life of a single girl. Although they set out to conquer the world together, as their lives take unexpected turns, Kate and Baba must ultimately learn to find their own way. ‘It’s a difficult trip, this coming of age…
O’Brien tells it with love and outrage, compassion and contempt.’ Los Angeles Times Book Review ‘A treasure…
powerful…
intelligent…
ironic.’ The New York Times Book Review

Girl with Green Eyes

The New York Times Book Review hailed The Country Girls, the first book in Edna O’Brien’s critically acclaimed trilogy, as ‘Powerful. Intelligent. Ironic. A treasure.’ The Lonely Girl continues the story of childhood friends Kate and Baba, now both twenty one, as they navigate the rocky, sometimes treacherous pathways of urban life. With hearts as big as Dublin, and hopes as bright as new pennies, they move bravely and eagerly toward the future. Yet the two couldn’t be more different. Kate toils in a grocery shop and lives out her romantic fantasies in books. Baba entertains more earthbound dreams. Their principles and friendship are tested when Kate meets a dashing married man, and discovers the exhilaration of passion…
and the consequences of falling in love. A novel that combines the teeming ethos of big city life with the ambitions and yearnings of two emerging young women, The Lonely Girl is a stellar achievement from one of Ireland’s finest storytellers.

Girls in Their Married Bliss

Girls in Their Married Bliss continues the tale of Kate and Baba, two ambitious Irish country girls in search of life. Romantic Kate seeks love, while pragmatic Baba will take whatever she can get. Together they set out to conquer Dublin and the world. Under the big city’s bright lights, they spin their lives into a whirl of comic and touching misadventures, wild flirtations, and reckless passions. But love changes everything. And as their lives take unexpected and separate turns, Baba and Kate must ultimately learn to go it alone.

August Is A Wicked Month

Separated from her husband, Ellen finds herself living alone in a city she dislikes a place that denies her past and offers no hope for her future. Determined to change her life, she decides to go south in search of sun and companionship.

A Pagan Place

A Pagan Place is Edna O’Brien’s true novel of Ireland. Here she returns to that uniquely wonderful, terrible, peculiar place she once called home and writes not only of a life there of the child becoming a woman but of the Irish experience out of which that life arises perhaps more pointedly than in any of her other works. This is the Ireland of country villages and barley fields, of druids in the woods, of unknown babies in the womb, of mischievous girls and Tans with guns. Ireland has marked Edna O’Brien’s life and work with unmistakable color and depth, and here she recreates her homeland with a singular grace and intensity.

Night

Edna O’Brien’s classic novel Night takes us through one long, sleepless Night with Mary Hooligan. From the center of her bed, ‘a four poster no less,’ Mary recalls her fertile past, from her childhood in the Irish countryside to the love affairs she has confronted since leaving for English shores. Wistful, wanton, this erotic reverie shows O’Brien to be one of the foremost heirs to modernism. ‘Very few writers use language as richly and sensuously…
There are passages here worthy of Joyce’ Library Journal.

The High Road

This richly peopled, compellingly readable book explores woman in her many roles as mystic, mother, daughter and lover. There is Iris with her ‘winsome wonsome’ ways, no longer young; there is Charlotte, the legendary and troubled debutante who has fled from society; and there is the narrator, Anna, who feels that her emotional life has folded until she meets the young Spanish girl, Catalina.

Time and Tide

Edna O’Brien’s most personal and most powerful novel in print from Plume for the first time. In a poignant, heart felt exploration of one woman’s struggle to be true to herself yet hold on to the things dearest to her, award winning author Edna O’Brien tracks the life of Nell Steadman, an innocent ‘country girl’ desperate to gain experience in whatever manner possible. Escaping from her overbearing family into an equally stifling marriage, Nell must fight for her freedom and custody of her children. Passionate, raw, and gorgeously written, Time and Tide is a profound exploration of the primal undertow of motherhood. ‘Brilliantly expressed…
O’Brien is one of the great writers of stories in the English speaking world.’ The New York Times Book Review ‘Time and Tide is O’Brien’s harshest yet most beautiful work. O’Brien brings together the earthly and the delicately poetic: she has the soul of Molly Bloom and the skills of Virginia Woolf.’ Newsweek ‘Adjectives for Edna O’Brien’s fiction inevitably include rich, raw, bleak, and relentless. As always in Ms. O’Brien’s work, there is wonderful writing about passion.’ The Wall Street Journal ‘Sharp, perfectly observed, true.’ The Boston Globe

House of Splendid Isolation

The author of A Fanatic Heart offers a timely novel that looks into the mind and heart of contemporary Ireland as an escaped IRA operative takes refuge in an abandoned house until the occupant unexpectedly returns home. NYT.

Down by the River

Fourteen year old Mary MacNamara does not know the words for what her father did to her Down by the River, but she knows nothing will ever be the same again. She lives in a small town in the rural West of Ireland where superstition and petty jealousies fester; where poverty and ignorance make people hard, bitter, and unforgiving. Mary will find scant justice or mercy among those in her community even less among those called to adjudicate upon her case in a city far away as her private tragedy is dragged into the public arena, making her doubly a victim, prey to militant factions on all sides. Recalling the controversial 1992 ‘Miss X’ case which drew international attention and provoked a nationwide crisis of conscience within Ireland, Down by the River combines passionately held principle and rich, evocative language and imagery to transform a dark drama of violence and suppressed emotions into a work of art that is universal, cathartic, and sublime. Down by the River was a national bestseller 1 on Newsday list. Reviews of Down by the River are some of the best of O’Brien’s distinguished career. O’Brien’s previous novel, The House of Splendid Isolation, is now in its 7th printing in Plume. Renaissance of interest in Irish literature and culture has potential to draw a whole new audience to this important and quintessentially Irish writer.

Wild Decembers

Edna O’Brien’s masterly new novel, Wild Decembers, charts the quick and critical demise of relations between Joseph Brennan and Mick Bugler ‘the warring sons of warring sons’ in the countryside of Western Ireland. With her inimitable gift for describing the occasions of heartbreak, O’Brien brings Joseph’s live for his land to the level of his sister Breege’s love for both him and his rival, Bugler. Breege sees ‘the wrong of years and the recent wrongs’ fuel each other as Bugler comes to claim recently inherited acreage on what her brother calls ‘ my mountain.’ A classic drama ensues, involving the full range of bonds and betrayals and leavened by the human comedy of which Edna O’Brien rarely loses sight. A dinner dance in the village of Cloontha and the seduction of Mick Bugler by an eager pair of uninhibited sisters rival Joyce in their hectic exuberance. But as the narrative unfolds, the reader is drawn into the sense of foreboding in a place where ‘fields mean more than fields, more than life and more than death too.’

In the Forest

In the Forest returns to the countryside of western Ireland, the vivid backdrop of Edna O’Brien’s previous novel, WILD DECEMBERS. Murder is again the story’s climax, but the killer’s motives are deeply buried in his psychoses rather than triggered by exterior conflict. Michen O’Kane loses his mother as a boy and by the age of ten is incarcerated for petty crimes in juvenile detention centers, ‘the places named after the saints.’ But his problems go beyond early loss and abuse the killing instinct is already kindled in him. He is christened by fearful neighbors ‘the Kinderschreck,’ meaning someone of whom small children are afraid. As in Greek tragedy, there are unwitting victims for sacrifice in the Kinderschreck’s world a radiant young woman, her little son, and a devout and trusting priest, all dispatched to the forest of O’Kane’s unbridled, deranged fantasies. Taken from a true story, Edna O’Brien’s riveting, frightening, and brilliantly told new novel reminds us that anything can happen ‘outside the boundary of mother and child,’ where protection isn’t afforded. The villagers of In the Forest see ‘one of their own sons, come out of their own soil, their own flesh and blood, gone amok.’ It is an intimate portrayal of both perpetrator and victims a story that is old, and current, and everywhere.

The Light of Evening

In this contemporary story with universal resonance, Edna O’Brien delves deep into the intense relationship that exists between a mother and daughter who long for closeness yet remain eternally at odds.

From her hospital bed in Dublin, the ailing Dilly Macready eagerly awaits a visit from her long estranged daughter, Eleanora. Years before, Eleanora fled Ireland for London when her sensuous first novel caused a local scandal. Eleanora’s peripatetic life since then has brought international fame but personal heartbreak in her failed quest for love. Always, her mother beseeches her to return home, sending letters that are priceless in their mix of love, guilt, and recrimination. For all her disapproval, Dilly herself knows something of Eleanora’s need for freedom: as a young woman in the 1920s, Dilly left Ireland for a new life in New York City. O’Brien’s marvelous cinematic portrait of New York in that era is a tour de force, filled with the clang and clatter of the city, the camaraderie of the working girls against their callous employers, and their fierce competition over handsome young men. But a lover’s betrayal sent Dilly reeling back to Ireland to raise a family on a lovely old farm named Rusheen. It is Rusheen that still holds mother and daughter together.

Yet Eleanora’s visit to her mother’s sickbed does not prove to be the glad reunion that Dilly prayed for. And in her hasty departure, Eleanora leaves behind a secret journal of their stormy relationship a revelation that brings the novel to a shocking close.

Brim*ming with the lyricism and earthy insight that are the hallmarks of Edna O’Brien’s acclaimed fiction, The Light of Evening is a novel of dreams and attachments, lamentations and betrayals. At its core is the realization that the bond between mother and child is unbreakable, stronger even than death.

The Love Object

Love and its objects are the common elements in these eight stories: the nervous love of a country mother for her sophisticated, town living daughter, the adoration of a mistress for her married lover and less orthodox affairs between women and their illusions.

Three Dublin Plays

The classic plays of the quintessential Dublin playwrightThree early plays by Sean O’Casey arguably his three greatest demonstrate vividly O’Casey’s ability to convey the reality of life and the depth of human emotion, specifically in Dublin before and during the Irish civil war of 1922 23, but, truly, throughout the known universe. In mirroring the lives of the Dublin poor, from the tenement dwellers in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock to the bricklayer, street vendor, and charwoman in The Plough and the Stars, Sean O’Casey conveys with urgency and eloquence the tiny details that create a total character as well as the terrors, large and small, that the constant threat of political violence inevitably brings. As Seamus Heaney has written, ‘O’Casey’s characters are both down to earth and larger than life…
His democratic genius was at one with his tragic understanding, and his recoil from tyranny and his compassion for the oppressed were an essential as opposed to a moral and thematic part of his art.’ A new production of Juno and the Paycock will transfer from the Donmar Theatre in London to New York in September 2000.

A Rose in the Heart

A collection of stories about physical and emotional comings and goings. and many set in Ireland.

A Fanatic Heart

In these selections from twenty years of her best short fiction, Edna O’Brien pulls the reader into a woman’s experience. Her stories portray a young Irish girl’s view of obsessive love and its often wrenching pain, while tales of contemporary life show women who open themselves to sexuality, to disappointment, to madness. Throughout, there is always O’Brien’s voice wondrous, despairing, moving examining passionate subjects that lay bare the desire and needs that can be hidden in a woman’s heart.

Lantern Slides

A new collection of short stories.

Returning

The classic plays of the quintessential Dublin playwrightThree early plays by Sean O’Casey arguably his three greatest demonstrate vividly O’Casey’s ability to convey the reality of life and the depth of human emotion, specifically in Dublin before and during the Irish civil war of 1922 23, but, truly, throughout the known universe. In mirroring the lives of the Dublin poor, from the tenement dwellers in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock to the bricklayer, street vendor, and charwoman in The Plough and the Stars, Sean O’Casey conveys with urgency and eloquence the tiny details that create a total character as well as the terrors, large and small, that the constant threat of political violence inevitably brings. As Seamus Heaney has written, ‘O’Casey’s characters are both down to earth and larger than life…
His democratic genius was at one with his tragic understanding, and his recoil from tyranny and his compassion for the oppressed were an essential as opposed to a moral and thematic part of his art.’ A new production of Juno and the Paycock will transfer from the Donmar Theatre in London to New York in September 2000.

Triptych and Iphigenia

With searing acuity, renowned Irish novelist Edna O’Brien presents three women a mistress, wife, and daughter who expose their passions for the same man and confront the ways that love can simultaneously liberate and entrap. This lyrical and captivating drama weaves together their stories to construct the portrait of a man through their eyes. Triptych is a powerful work that explores sex, marriage, and predatory relationships.

Saints and Sinners

With her inimitable gift for describing the workings of the heart and mind, Edna O’Brien introduces us to a vivid new cast of restless, searching people who whether in the Irish countryside or London or New York remind us of our own humanity. In ‘Send My Roots Rain,’ Miss Gilhooley, a librarian, waits in the lobby of a posh Dublin hotel expecting to meet a celebrated poet while reflecting on the great love who disappointed her. The Irish workers of ‘The Shovel Kings’ have pipe dreams of becoming millionaires in London, but long for their quickly changing homeland exiles in both places. ‘Green Georgette’ is a searing anatomy of class, through the eyes of a little girl; ‘Old Wounds’ illuminates the importance of family and memory in old age. In language that is always bold and vital, Edna O’Brien pays tribute to the universal forces that rule our lives.

Virginia

An evocative play about Virginia Woolf’s life and relationships with her husband, Leonard, and her lover, Vita Sackville-West.

Mother Ireland

Long before Frank McCourt Angela’s Ashesand Nuala O’Faolain Are You Somebody? reminisced about the hardships and humor of their Irish childhoods, acclaimed novelist Edna O’Brien captured the soul of Ireland and its people in her 1976 memoir, Mother Ireland. Long out of print, Plume is reissuing this emerald gem so that it will take its rightful place among contemporary Irish classics. Mother Ireland includes seven essays seamlessly woven into an autobiographical tapestry. In her lyrical, sensuous voice, O’Brien describes growing up in rural County Clare, from her days in a convent school to her first kiss to her eventual migration to England. Weaving her own personal history with the history of Ireland, she effortlessly melds local customs and ancient lore with the fascinating people and events that shaped he young life. The result is a colorful and timeless narrative that perfectly captures the heart and soul of this harshly beautiful country. Rendered with grace and beauty, resonating with emotion and passion, Mother Ireland is an ode to a time, a place, and a people that one can leave, but never leave behind.

James Joyce

The fifth book in the bestselling Penguin Lives Penguin Lives pairs celebrated writers with famous Great writers on great figures individuals who have shaped our thinking.

With all the earthy sensuality and majestic storytelling that have made her one of Ireland’s preeminent writers, award winning novelist Edna O’Brien paints the most passionate, personal, and sensuous portrait of her fellow countryman yet written. James Joyce is a return journey to the land of politics, history, and the saints and scholars that shaped this creator of the twentieth century’s most groundbreaking novel, Ulysses.

In her beautiful, poetic telling, O’Brien traces Joyce’s early days as the rambunctious young Jesuit student; his falling in love with a tall, red haired Galway girl named Nora Barnacle on Bloomsday; and his exile to Trieste where he met with success, love, and finally, despair. Only Edna O’Brien, with her deft, supple prose, her rebel Irish heart, and her kindred spirit, could capture the brilliance and complexity of this great modern master.

Byron in Love

From one of our greatest novelists comes this luminous portrait of the world’s first literary rock star. Acclaimed biographer of James Joyce Edna O Brien has written an intimate biography that suits her fiery and charismatic subject. She follows Byron from the dissipations of Regency London to the wilds of Albania and the Socratic pleasures of Greece and Turkey, culminating in his meteoric rise to fame at the age of twenty four on the publication of Childe Harold. With her prismatic eye and novelistic style, O Brien eerily captures the spirit of the man and creates an indelible portrait of Byron that explodes the Romantic myth. From his escapades with John Edleston, the fourteen year old Cambridge choir boy, to those with a galaxy of women that included his half sister, his wife of one year, and the Italian countess who forsook her satyr like husband for the peer of England and its greatest poet, Byron scandalized the world and inspires Byronmania to this day. Byron, as brilliantly rendered by O Brien, is the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, and defiantly immortal. 8 pages of illustrations

Tales for the Telling

Issued in paperback for St. Patrick”s Day, t his is a classic collection of traditional Irish tales retol d by the well known Irish writer Edna O”Brien and illustrate d by children”s author Michael Foreman. ‘

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