Exquisitely crafted novel. And I do mean BEAUTIFULLY written — images, word choice, lovely repetition of motifs. It really does deserve all the plaudiExquisitely crafted novel. And I do mean BEAUTIFULLY written — images, word choice, lovely repetition of motifs. It really does deserve all the plaudits and would not at all surprise me if it takes the big award. It’s a debut novel, for heaven’s sakes!
The audio is also beautifully read.
It would be silly to summarize. It deserves to be discovered in its own right....more
Powerful. Especially the last chapter, or actually the Epilogue. The three books of the trilogy are so different, reflecting different periods of the Powerful. Especially the last chapter, or actually the Epilogue. The three books of the trilogy are so different, reflecting different periods of the principal characters’ lives. It would be worth rereading all three. These audiobooks were all read by the author and I loved her presence throughout. The passion of her reading of the epilogue blew me away, in fact....more
**spoiler alert** I found the second installment of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls trilogy much more absorbing than the first. Perhaps it was becaus**spoiler alert** I found the second installment of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls trilogy much more absorbing than the first. Perhaps it was because I knew the characters better and they’d grown on me. But I think the real reason is that the romance between Cait and her older lover Eugene allows O’Brien to dig so deeply into the impoverished souls of her Irish characters, shaped as they were by experiences of brutal loving family, brutal absolute religion, brutal drink. Still O’Brien’s characters are complex and none is completely irredeemable, although Cait’s father comes close.
The love affair between Cait and Eugene explores the connection between two people attracted to each others differences—age, background, sophistication, relative wealth—until they aren’t, until the gulf separating them becomes too great. Cait dislikes Eugene’s friends and comes to feel he is only truly hers when they are making love. He tires of her emotionality, however well earned from the abrupt loss of her mother and her brutish drunk of a father. Eugene tells Cait that she needs to grow up and learn to control her emotions, because « the world is not just us ». If Eugene is, as Cait accuses him, so sure of his rightness, she is not hesitant in trying to manipulate him into telling her what she wants to hear, into doing what she wants. I felt great sympathy for both of them.
By the end of the novel, Cait and her best friend Baba are heading for London. Cait has waited to the very last moment of departure believing Eugene will come and get her, she will run to him, and their stable disequilibrium will be restored. Thankfully he doesn’t come. As he said, she needs to grow up. Baba worries that Cait will persist even in London in reading and wearing flat shoes, evidence to Baba of being « a right idgit ». But Cait tells us that, in fact, she was just finding her feet.
O’Brien writes with a wonderful lyricism and this audio version of the series is read affectingly by herself.
Loading...
