The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue [Mass Market Paperback]

Edna O'Brien (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Country Girls Trilogy | Publication Date: April 1, 1998

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

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 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.

A beautiful portrait of the pain and joy of youth, the ruin of marriage gone wrong, and the ache of lost friendship and love, this trilogy of Edna O’Brien’s remarkable early novels is more than just a harbinger of the stunning and masterly writer she has become.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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

“Astonishing! Edna O’Brien is supremely talented.”
—The Nation

“A TREASURE . . . POWERFUL. . . INTELLIGENT. . . IRONIC.”
—New York Times Book Review

“HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. . . . O’Brien’s particular appeal is that she can be tender yet merciless, romantic yet grittily sexual. She resides admirably where quality and popular writing intersect.”
—Booklist

“A UNIVERSAL STORY. . . . The spirit of youth, the search for love and the despair from disappointments come through clearly. . . . O’Brien’s sensitivity reaches into the very depths of these young

“MAGNIFICENT, EXUBERANT. . . as vivid as autobiography. . . rich, perfect. . . a strange brew of ecstatic abandon and morning-after sorrow.”
—The Village Voice

“MAGICAL. . . two of the most wonderful heroines in modern fiction. . . impulsively romantic as it is resigned and wise.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Plume (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452263948
• ISBN-13: 978-0452263949
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.2 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #306,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edna O'Brien, the author of "The Country Girls" Trilogy, "The Light of Evening," and "Byron in Love," is the recipient of the James Joyce Ulysses Medal, and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Bought it for Ireland, but read it for Women, March 1, 2001

By 

CherishRa (the Mid-South) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue (Mass Market Paperback)

I bought this book preparatory to a month in Ireland, as a mental/political exercise (aware of former banning). I couldn't put it down, and got three hours or less sleep for three nights in a row. I foisted it on my mom with warnings not to begin it on a weeknight, she got hooked on a Tuesday and went downhill too. We talked for days about how tightly written it was, how clean, spare, descriptive, full of foreshadowing, and painful to any woman who knows what it is to be centally disappointed by a man. Yet the book never whines, it never pushes itself sobbing on your shoulder. It sits in dignity with sadness.

Very quietly and methodically tragic, in the Irish way that says you do not whine about tragedy, you do not make fuss of it, you just simply pray a bit and go on. What makes the book so very valuable and unusual is that it applies the Irish knack for storytelling and forthright 'un-tragic' tragedy to women's lives and women's stories. It is both an Irish book full of water and woodsmoke, and a women's book in all its painful honesty and revelatory grace.

Please read.

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely brilliant - but harrowing., March 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue (Mass Market Paperback)

If you happen to think that being Irish would be just the nicest cosiest thing in the world, and you want to keep thinking that, then don't read this book. If you want to read a genuine unputdownable masterpiece, though, and laugh and cry your way from the first page to the last, then go for it.

I might also add, though, that if you're a husband, like me, it's only fair to warn you that this book will search your conscience pretty thoroughly.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars breath of fresh air, February 9, 2000

By 

Elizabeth T. Johnson (south carolina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue (Mass Market Paperback)

i heard an interview with edna o'brien on npr's FRESH AIR and was impressed with her style. i read the trilogy because of the interview, not because of the Ireland component. this book is poignant, funny, sincere, a page-turner, and honest. i keep looking at the copyright date and not believing that it was written years ago. this book is a definite breath of fresh air!