Bottom Line: The first time I read Edna O’Brien’s https://www.amazon.com/Country-Girls-Trilogy-Epilogue/dp/0452263948/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495590030&sr=1-1&keywords=country+girls+trilogy+edna+obrien was several decades ago. I read it again more recently along with another of her novels and some short stories. I wanted to be refreshed on the work of a woman who had given me entre into the world of Ireland and women and left me feeling like I had experienced a time and place unknown to me. I find her memoirs lend the suspicion that her fiction was mostly her autobiography only better organized and written. Country Girl, A Memoir is a definite read for her fans, but I am not sure who else will like it.
Ms O’Brien’s lack of interest in writing this book is clear. Being a memoir it need not be any of the things a biography should be. Sequential, based on fact, complete all not here or not consistently. We do get what seems like her honest point of view about herself and her first husband, but the rest of her people who matter come in and out of focus or have their names obscured. For example there is a second husband, I think or maybe three, she is not as exacting in tell about her loves as the failed love that produced her children.
That we only get her side of that first marriage is understandable. I am not certain that she intended for his every negative prediction about how Ms O’Brien would live and raise her kids would prove true. Not to give away too much, she admits to a hedonistic lifestyle, it was the 1960’s after all, and the kids are sent away to British Boarding schools. Her version of herself is better than these two facts suggest but for years at a time we read little of substance about her kids, and almost nothing about who they became as adults.
The writing itself is in the school of assemble pieces as they emerge from a fog. Detailed set ups that trail into incomplete finishes. Too many famous names with too many of them passing by rather than listed for a reason. She will form friendships with many unlikely people including at least one I will not mention hoping to surprise you as it did me.
Having finished Country Girls, I can say that the person rather than the events are informative about O’Brien’s inner self. I tend to believe she is telling us her truth, warts and all. I am not sure but that you would know her better from her fiction.
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