A pagan place - Edna O''Brien

Nedanstående innehåll är skapat av Mimers Brunns besökare. Kommentera arbete

Edna O’Brien is an Irish writer, famous for her rich and sensuous prose. She made her breakthrough with "The Country Girls Trilogy" (1960-64). Several of O''''Brien''''s books, dealing with childhood and disappointments in sexual love, have been banned in Ireland. Her works have gained wide approval, particularly among American readers.
"They used to ban my books, but now when I go there, people are courteous to my face, though rather slanderous behind my back. Then again, Ireland has changed. There are a lot of young people who are irreligious, or less religious. Ironically, they wouldn''''t be interested in my early books - they would think them awkward. They are aping English and American way of life. If I went to a dance hall in Dublin now I would feel as alien as in a disco in Oklahoma." (O''''Brien in Writers at Work, ed. by George Plimpton, 1986)
Edna O''''Brien was born in Twamgraney, County Clare in 1932. Her family was opposed to anything to do with literature and later she described her small village as "enclosed, fervid and bigoted. (narrow-minded)"
When O''''Brien was a student in Dublin and her mother found a book of Sean O''''Casey in her suitcase she wanted to burn it. After finishing primary school O''''Brien was educated at the Convent of Mercy in Loughrea (1941-46). In Dublin she worked in a pharmacy, and studied at the Pharmaceutical College at night. During this period she wrote small pieces for the Irish Press. In 1950 she was awarded a licence as pharmacist.
She got married in the summer of 1954 and moved with her husband, the Czech/Irish writer Ernest Gébler, and two sons to London.
While O''''Brien was gaining fame as a writer, her husband struggled with his own works. Carlo Gébler, their son, writes in Father & I (2001), that he insisted she sign a payment from her publisher over to him - she did, and left him.
Since her divorce in 1964, she has remained in England. Later she called her husband "an attractive father figure - a Professor Higgins."
O''''Brien published her first novel, THE COUNTRY GIRLS, in 1960. The story is partly based on the author''''s own experiences being brought up in a convent. "The novel is autobiographical insofar I was born and bred in the west of Ireland, educated at a convent, and was full of romantic yearnings, coupled with a sense of outrage." (O''''Brien in Writers at Work) The Country Girls continued in The Lonely Girl (1962) and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). The trilogy traced the lives of two Irish women, Kate and Baba, from their school days in the Irish countryside to their disillusioned adulthood and failed marriages in London.
In A PAGAN PLACE (written 1970 and released in 1971) O''''Brien returns to the Ireland of her childhood. The novel tells the story of a girl, who is seduced by a priest in a diary-like form or almost like a letter written to yourself in a stream of image, impression, expression and experience. This book tells about the dull suffering of the poor Irish child confronted at every turn with plentiful opportunities for a sensational, scandalous and persistent downward spiral into eternal fire and damnation. I do not recommend it unfortunately because I thought it was to disorganized. Perhaps...