Kate et Baba, les « filles de la campagne » de cette prodigieuse saga romanesque, grandissent dans un village de l'Ouest de l'Irlande. Quand la modeste et romantique Kate obtient une bourse pour aller étudier au couvent, l'intrépide Baba décide de la suivre. L'atmosphère y est irrespirable pour ces très jeunes filles éprises de liberté. Baba trouve alors le moyen de les faire toutes deux renvoyer. Les voilà parties pour Dublin, qu'elles rêvent de conquérir. La cruauté des hommes, prompts à abuser de leur naïveté ou à s'attribuer le statut avantageux de pygmalion, leur vaut désillusions et souffrances. Mais du moins vivent-elles selon leurs désirs.
Le succès littéraire a été à la hauteur du scandale lors de la parution, en 1960, de The Country Girls, le premier livre de la célèbre trilogie d'Edna O'Brien. L'audace et la lucidité de la romancière de trente ans, concernant l'éveil à la sexualité de ses deux héroïnes, les mécanismes de l'oppression subie par les femmes et aussi leur refus d'être assignées à leur rôle de mère, font aujourd'hui résonner sa trilogie comme un vivifiant manifeste féministe.
Country Girls réunit les trois premiers romans d'Edna O'Brien, née en 1930 dans le comté de Clare et tôt installée à Londres. Dans l'Irlande catholique et rétrograde de l'époque, leur publication a eu l'effet d'une déflagration : mis à l'index, brûlés en place publique, ils ont également valu à leur autrice les pires commentaires misogynes. Malgré cela, depuis 1960, la grande romancière irlandaise n'a jamais quitté sa table de travail, construisant une oeuvre éblouissante et traduite dans le monde entier.
Toute la puissance de son écriture - son lyrisme, sa tendresse pour ses personnages, son humour salutaire et son sens de l'intrigue - est présente dans cette trilogie inaugurale.
Girl est un roman sidérant, qui se lit d'un souffle et laisse pantois. Écrivant à la première personne, Edna O'Brien se met littéralement dans la peau d'une adolescente enlevée par Boko Haram. Depuis l'irruption d'hommes en armes dans l'enceinte de l'école, on vit avec elle son rapt, en compagnie de ses camarades de classe ; la traversée de la jungle en camion, sans autre échappatoire que la mort pour qui veut tenter de sauter à terre ; l'arrivée dans le camp, avec obligation de revêtir uniforme et hijab. La faim, la terreur, le désarroi et la perte des repères sont le lot quotidien de ces très jeunes filles qui, face aux imprécations de leurs ravisseurs, finissent par oublier jusqu'au son de leurs propres prières.
Mais le plus difficile commence quand la protagoniste de ce monologue halluciné parvient à s'évader, avec l'enfant qu'elle a eu d'un de ses bourreaux. Après des jours de marche, un parcours administratif harassant lors de son arrivée en ville, celle qui a enfin pu rejoindre son village et les siens se retrouve en butte à leur suspicion - et à l'hostilité de sa propre mère. Victime, elle est devenue coupable d'avoir introduit dans leur descendance un être au sang souillé par celui de l'ennemi.
Écrit dans l'urgence et la fièvre, Girl bouleverse par son rythme et sa fureur à dire, une fois encore, le destin des femmes bafouées. Dans son obstination à survivre et son inaltérable confiance en la possible rédemption du coeur humain, l'héroïne de ce très grand roman s'inscrit dans la lignée des figures féminines nourries par l'expérience de la jeune Edna O'Brien, mise au ban de son pays alors qu'elle avait à peine trente ans.
Devenue un des plus grands écrivains de ce siècle, elle nous offre un livre d'une sombre splendeur avec, malgré tout, au bout du tunnel, la tendresse et la beauté pour viatiques.
Edna O'Brien n'a jamais caché que James Joyce lui avait ouvert les portes de la littérature. Vibrant hommage à un « mec funnominal » - mot emprunté à Joyce - et à son stupéfiant corps-à-corps avec la langue, James & Nora retrace la vie de l'artiste en couple, depuis sa rencontre à Dublin en juin 1904 avec une belle fille de la campagne originaire de Galway, Nora Barnacle, jusqu'à sa mort, en 1941. Leur fuite en Italie, la naissance de leurs enfants, leur misère matérielle, leur flamboyante vie sexuelle, et aussi leurs deux solitudes, Edna O'Brien les concentre en autant de fulgurants instantanés.
Dans une passionnante postface, Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, son traducteur, éclaire sa proximité avec l'écriture réputée si complexe de James Joyce. Le « yiddish de Joyce », ce creuset de langues - dix-sept - qu'il écrivait toutes en anglais, serait « plus familier à Edna O'Brien qu'à d'autres lecteurs européens pour une raison évidente : elle connaît la prononciation de l'anglais dans les différentes régions de l'Irlande [...] et pratique aussi, comme une seconde langue maternelle (pourquoi n'y en aurait-il qu'une ?), l'anglais irlandais. »
De fait, ce volume si bref se déploie telle une étoffe précieuse miroitant en d'infinis reflets, dont chacun est une nouvelle invitation à la lecture.
'As skilful, stylish and pacy as one would expect from so adept a novelist' Sunday Telegraph
Edna O'Brien depicts James Joyce as a man hammered by Church, State and family, yet from such adversities he wrote works 'to bestir the hearts of men and angels'. The journey begins with Joyce the arrogant youth, his lofty courtship of Nora Barnacle, their hectic sexuality, children, wanderings, debt and profligacy, and Joyce's obsession with the city of Dublin, which he would re-render through his words. Nor does Edna O'Brien spare us the anger and isolation of Joyce's later years, when he felt that the world had turned its back on him, and she asks how could it be otherwise for a man who knew that conflict is the source of all creation.
'A delight from start to finish . . . achieves the near impossibility of giving a thoroughly fresh view of Joyce' Sunday Times
'Accessible and passionate, it is a book which should bring Joyce in all his glory and agony to a new and very wide audience' Irish Independent
It was June 10th, Barnacle Day. He saw her in Nassau Street and they stopped to talk. She thought his blue eyes were those of a Norseman. He was twenty-two, and she, Nora Barnacle, was twenty and employed as a chambermaid in Finn's Hotel. They agreed to meet on June 14th, outside No. 1 Merrion Square, the home of Sir William Wilde, but Nora did not turn up. After a dejected letter from Joyce they met on June 16th, a date which came to be immortalized in literature as Bloomsday.
Edna O'Brien paints a miniature portrait of an artist, idealist, insurgent and filled with a secret loneliness. In Nora, he was to find accomplice, collaborator and muse. For all their sexual escalations, Joyce considered their relationship 'a kind of sacrament'. Their life was one of wandering, emotional upheaval and poverty. It was also one that was binding and mysterious, and defied all the mores of intimacy.
In prose brimming with life and energy, Edna O'Brien resurrects a relationship of magnificent intensity on the page, and in doing so shows herself to be touched by the genius of the writer she loves above all others.
'Edna O'Brien has always had a gift for writing about affairs of the heart' Guardian
'Her boldly coloured portrait rewrites his life with all the brio and elan for which her novels are renowned' The Herald
'Hugely enjoyable' Daily Telegraph
BYRON IN LOVE - the nobility, arrogance and sheer theatre of Byron's life.
Byron, more than any other poet, has come to personify the poet as rebel, imaginative and lawless, reaching beyond race, creed or frontier, his gigantic flaws redeemed by a magnetism and ultimately a heroism that by ending in tragedy raised it and him from the particular to the universal.
Everything about Lord George Gordon Byron was a paradox - insider and outsider, beautiful and deformed, serious and facetious, profligate but on occasion miserly, and possessed of a fierce intelligence trapped forever in a child's magic and malices. He was also a great poet, but as he reminded us, poetry is a distinct faculty and has little to do with the individual life of its creator.
Edna O'Brien's exemplary biography focuses upon the diverse and colourful women in Byron's life.
'O'Brien charts the many loves of the notorious 19th-century poet's reckless life in immediate and candid prose' Sunday Telegraph
'A beguiling blend of sympathy, humour and, of course, her signature lilting style . . . a delightful, though poignant, account' Main on Sunday
'There is much to enjoy in this idiosyncratic and highly readable account of the poet whose writing enthralled and whose actions appalled in equal measure' Independent
Edna O'Brien returns to the world of her debut novel, The Country Girls, in an inspired account of a dying mother and her daughterFrom her hospital bed in Dublin, the elderly Dilly awaits the visit of her daughter, Eleanora, from London. The epochs of her life pass before her; emigrating to America in the 1920s, a romantic liaison she had there, the destiny that brought her back to Ireland, and her marriage into the stately Rusheen. She also retraces Eleanora's precipitate marriage to a foreigner, and Dilly's heart-rending letters sent over the years in a determination to reclaim her daughter.Unfortunately, Eleanora's visit does not prove to be the glad reunion that it might have been . . . 'O'Brien's eloquent, luminous prose is used to rich effect in this story of a mother and daughter, and the turbulent passions that they provoke in one another' Daily Mail
'A courageous as well as an artful book. It is also a poignant one' Irish Times
'Edna O'Brien is one of the greatest writers in the English-speaking world' New York Times Book Review
'She is one of our bravest and best novelists' Irish Times
'A powerful, complex fable, mysteriously conceived and deeply felt . . . Brilliant' Irish Times When Josie, confined to bed in her dilapidated country mansion, sees the door swing back and the hooded face appear, she knows who it is. Into her world comes McGreevy, bloody crusader for a united Ireland, who has chosen her house for sanctuary.Within the incarcerating walls of the house, an undercurrent of love develops between two people who think differently but feel the same. Destiny has flung them together and, as the police net closes in, fear dawns in Josie that McGreevy has used her house for more than refuge. And there may be no escape for either of them.'A writer at the height of her powers' Tatler
'A work of insight, sympathy and breath-holding suspense' Daily Mail
'O'Brien at her shrewd and lyrical best' Sunday Times
'So well written you won't be disappointed whatever you are looking for' Literary Review
'A sharp and thoughtful depiction of the modern Irish question . . . poetically written' The Times
'A gripping love story which will keep the reader guessing to the end and delight Edna O'Brien's many fans' Literary ReviewWhen a young man arrives from Australia to claim his inheritance, he changes a small Irish town for ever. Joseph Brennan sees Michael Bugler, the returned exile, as a threat. And for Breege, Joseph's younger sister, Bugler is an irresistible stranger to whose charms she must not succumb for fear of betraying her brother.A love-hate story on many levels, Wild Decembers explores the depth and darkness at the root of all ownership. With a rich and comic cast of characters, this primal story is a complex and daring work, fixed in a time and place, yet imbued with the permanence of myth.'The power of the writing and the dazzle of the images make the book a resounding success' Dublin Evening News
'Intense and poetic' Independent
'She is one of our bravest and best novelists' Irish Times
'She's an exceptionally good writer. Those elegant, tumbling words, and the conviction that the writer is making a really important point' Sunday Tribune
'Edna O'Brien is one of the greatest writers in the English-speaking world' New York Times Book Review
In the deceptively idyllic setting of rural Ireland, a crime of passion results in an emotional battlefield. At the centre of the crisis a young girl struggles with the conflicts of mind and body, the teaching of her faith and her mounting bewilderment at what she must do. As she tries to conceal, then escape her fate, she finds herself driven to the brink of despair. And then her private - and redeemable - tragedy is dragged into the public realm, and the power of decision is taken out of her hands. 'An angry, violent yet startlingly beautiful book' Independent on Sunday'Taut and relentlessly powerful . . . O'Brien describes the tug of war between religious zealots and the kindly legal figures brilliantly. The story becomes grotesquely suspenseful and chilling' Literary Review
'Extraordinary and gripping . . . Down by the River is her most exciting and rewarding book by far' Observer
'Her best book, and a modern masterpiece' Sunday Independent
'One of the finest ever novels by an Irish writer' John Waters, MagillSet in the countryside of western Ireland, In the Forest centres on unwitting victims for sacrifice: a radiant young woman, her young son and a trusting priest, all despatched to the wilderness of a young man's unbridled, deranged fantasies. Edna O'Brien's riveting, frightening and brilliantly told new novel reminds us that anything can happen when protection isn't afforded to either perpetrator or victim . . . 'A savage portrait of desolation and rage, brilliantly told, truly shocking' Sunday Independent
'Brave, sensitive, beautifully written' Sunday Tribune
'A spare, compelling and compassionate novel' Guardian
