#ednaobrien — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ednaobrien, aggregated by home.social.
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Girl, by Edna O’Brien
Irish novelist Edna O’Brien passed away two years ago. When I read of her death I didn’t know anything about her writing except that her first novel, Country Girls, had been banned in Ireland. That made me decide to read some of her work. As it happens the first book by her that I came across was the last she wrote, in 2019, which I bought over a year ago and has been sitting on my coffee table ever since. I started reading it this evening and found it so compelling that I couldn’t put it down until I had finished it.
Girl is set in Nigeria and is told in the voice of Maryam, a young girl who is kidnapped, along with her schoolmates, by the jihadists of Boko Haram. Maryam and the other schoolgirls are subjected to appaling horror and degradation described in unflinching detail. Eventually Maryam is given as a prize to a Boko Haram soldier Mahmoud, and bears his baby (simply called Babby). Maryam escapes with Babby with another girl, and drifts into and out of danger. Upon eventually returning home she is punished by her family, but the book ends on an optimistic note as she finds sanctuary.
The story is grim but O’Brien clearly had a great gift for storytelling, with subtle shifts in style as Maryam’s mental state shifts between horror, to relief, to sad reminiscence of happier times. In her acknowledgements at the end, the author explains that Maryam’s tale is actually a synthesis of accounts of various ordeals experienced by real-life women, to whom she spoke to in two visits to Nigeria, where she also learned something of the linguistic mannerisms of Maryam’s people. It is quite an achievement for an Irish woman in her late eighties to find a convincing voice for a young Nigerian girl subjected to pains surely beyond imagination. I think it’s a brilliantly moving book.
Girl has been criticised for O’Brien’s appropriation of the voice of a different culture, which (it has been claimed) makes it feel like an artificial exercise. A book of this kind by a Nigerian author would no doubt be more “authentic” in many important respects, but what I took from it (apart from the beautiful prose) is the emotional authenticity of the emotional tone and her desire to celebrate the strength of the many women whose struggles come together in the story of Maryam. The violent oppression of women is widespread in this world, so Maryam is a universal figure – a survivor.
#BokoHaram #EdnaOBrien #Girl -
Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story gets a release date. Details here https://bit.ly/4kPRm4Z
#BlueRoadTheEdnaOBrienStrory #film #documentary #EdnaOBrien #Ireland #author #writer #TheCountryGirls #book #SinéadOShea
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Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story gets a release date. Details here https://bit.ly/4kPRm4Z
#BlueRoadTheEdnaOBrienStrory #film #documentary #EdnaOBrien #Ireland #author #writer #TheCountryGirls #book #SinéadOShea
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@ChrisMayLA6 @bookstodon my favourite thing atm is choosing an author I’ve read a bit of, and finding or setting up a reading challenge on @thestorygraph of all their work, so I can (re-)read everything in order. Currently doing this with #ASByatt, #EdnaOBrien, #JackKerouac and #DavidFosterWallace.
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August goes by wickedly fast...
Remembering the uncompromising Edna O'Brien (1930-2024) -
August goes by wickedly fast...
Remembering the uncompromising Edna O'Brien (1930-2024) -
We use "warmth" but not "coolth" – at least, not usually. New post on a rare word:
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2024/08/16/birth-of-the-coolth/
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We use "warmth" but not "coolth" – at least, not usually. New post on a rare word:
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2024/08/16/birth-of-the-coolth/
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"We say to ourselves: 'Where will it all lead us to?' and coax the fates to take us on to disaster." —Edna O'Brien
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"We say to ourselves: 'Where will it all lead us to?' and coax the fates to take us on to disaster." —Edna O'Brien
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"She insisted that literature was a precursor to sin and damnation, whereas I believed it was the only alchemy that there was."
—Edna O'Brien, Saints and Sinners, 2011
#EdnaOBrien #IrishLiterature #IrishBooks #writing #words #literature
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"She insisted that literature was a precursor to sin and damnation, whereas I believed it was the only alchemy that there was."
—Edna O'Brien, Saints and Sinners, 2011
#EdnaOBrien #IrishLiterature #IrishBooks #writing #words #literature
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"I'm not a bad match," he said. "I've a pump in the yard, a bull and a brother a priest. What more could a woman want?"
—Edna O'Brien, Girl with Green Eyes (aka The Lonely Girl), 1962
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"I'm not a bad match," he said. "I've a pump in the yard, a bull and a brother a priest. What more could a woman want?"
—Edna O'Brien, Girl with Green Eyes (aka The Lonely Girl), 1962
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Sad to hear that Edna O'Brien has died. What an amazing body of work she leaves, and what a life she had. The controversy over her early books had ebbed by the time I started reading her, but the elegance of her writing and the power of her stories remained, and remains, unaltered
#EdnaOBrien #IrishLiterature #IrishBooks #Ireland #books #writing
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Sad to hear that Edna O'Brien has died. What an amazing body of work she leaves, and what a life she had. The controversy over her early books had ebbed by the time I started reading her, but the elegance of her writing and the power of her stories remained, and remains, unaltered
#EdnaOBrien #IrishLiterature #IrishBooks #Ireland #books #writing
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Edna O'Brien, Irish literary giant who wrote 'The Country Girls,' dies at 93
'The vitality of her prose was a mirror of her zest for life'
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Edna O'Brien, Irish literary giant who wrote 'The Country Girls,' dies at 93
'The vitality of her prose was a mirror of her zest for life'
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CW: Death of a public figure
I just heard this evening about the death of Edna O'Brien. An amazing person, author, figure - so often standing against and challenging so much of Ireland's establishment and powerful interests at a time when, for most people, that was impossible. RIP.
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CW: Death of a public figure
I just heard this evening about the death of Edna O'Brien. An amazing person, author, figure - so often standing against and challenging so much of Ireland's establishment and powerful interests at a time when, for most people, that was impossible. RIP.
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#EdnaOBrien ist gestorben. Sie wurde 93 Jahre alt. Das ist ein schöner Nachruf auf sie und ihr außerordentliches Werk:
#Literatur #literature #rip #bookstodon #womenwriters #IrishLiterature
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2024/07/28/irish-author-edna-obrien-has-died-aged-93/ -
#EdnaOBrien ist gestorben. Sie wurde 93 Jahre alt. Das ist ein schöner Nachruf auf sie und ihr außerordentliches Werk:
#Literatur #literature #rip #bookstodon #womenwriters #IrishLiterature
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2024/07/28/irish-author-edna-obrien-has-died-aged-93/ -
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
#RitaTushingham, #PeterFinch and a stellar debut from scene stealing #LynnRedgrave. Based on an #EdnaOBrien novel
#GirlwithGreenEyes (1964) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058142/
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CW: #streetsofdublin #streetart #dublin
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Profi wneud dolen o app #StoryGraph - ydy hyn yn gweithio?
#EdnaOBrien - Johnny I Hardly Knew You
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/e98c440b-eb4d-4669-92b6-eca4f9200060 #DarllenNawr
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“Writing and reading … those two intensities that have buttressed my whole life.” Edna O’Brien, born #OTD in 1930 #EdnaOBrien #writing #reading
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“Writing and reading … those two intensities that have buttressed my whole life.” Edna O’Brien, born #OTD in 1930 #EdnaOBrien #writing #reading
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Edna O'Brien's prose lines up words and sentences like smart, spirited children on school photo day
#writing #reading #books #bookstodon #literature #EdnaOBrien #IrishLiterature #IrishBooks
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Edna O'Brien's prose lines up words and sentences like smart, spirited children on school photo day
#writing #reading #books #bookstodon #literature #EdnaOBrien #IrishLiterature #IrishBooks
