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    Country Girl: A Memoir
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    Country Girl: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    Country Girl: A Memoir
    Audiobook13 hours

    Country Girl: A Memoir

    Published by Hachette Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "Country Girl is Edna O'Brien's exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life."--National Public Radio

    When Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest. O'Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. Country Girl brings us face-to-face with a life of high drama and contemplation.

    Starting with O'Brien's birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the '60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as a celebrated writer and the guest of Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton. Country Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateApr 30, 2013
    ISBN9781478978299
    Unavailable
    Country Girl: A Memoir

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    Reviews for Country Girl

    3.5/5

    161 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I love Ireland
    • 3/5
      The Country Girls sent shock waves through rural Ireland when it was published in 1960. Across the sea, London was about to enter the Swinging Sixties but in Eire, sex was seldom mentioned openly and especially not when it involved unmarried girls. Edna O’Brien’s novel about two girls who leave their convent upbringing and small village life in search of life and love in city, was castigated for daring to break the silence. O’Brien, who was living in London at the time, found her novel banned in her home country and her parents so ashamed that they refused to speak to her.Reading the book now, the elements that were considered so startling in the 1960s, seem creepy rather than shocking.This is essentially a coming of age story of Caithleen and Baba, two young country girls on the verge of womanhood who leave the sheltered environment of their convent school for the city in search of life, love and fun. Before they get to Dublin however we learn about their childhood, about drunken fathers, and impoverished families, of convent education and schoolgirl acts of rebellion and misbehaviour..All of this would make for a novel that is nothing remarkable, those themes and events having been played out in many other works already. O’Brien signals that something is different however when she introduces a figure known only as Mr Gentleman. Although he is decidedly older and also married, he begins to take the 14-year-old Caithleen out in his large black car; first on a shopping trip to Limerick and then dinner where he encourages her to drink wine (she decides she prefers the taste of lemonade). Each time they meet, he edges across the barrier of acceptability, hand holding turns into kisses of her hand then all the way up her arm. By the time she’s in Dublin, they’re spending the whole night kissing and canoodling in his car watching the sun rise over the sea. Our Caithleen isn’t exactly reliable – there are lots of gaps in her accounts of what really happens between them – but it’s not difficult to fill in the blanks. Is she really as innocent as she seems? She’s an intelligent girl but she doesn’t seem to realise that she is slowly being groomed and that there really is no happy ending possible.O’Brien brings the spirit of Eire vividly to life through two characters who make you laugh one moment and make you cringe the next as yet another example of their naivety is revealed. On the whole though I found it a bit so-so. The story of how O’Brien actually came to write this book and the repercussions on her marriage (as revealed in her 2013 memoir The Country Girl), is far more interesting than the book itself.
    • 3/5
      A tough one to rate. A very easy read, actual would be fine for high school.

      This coming-of-age story features two girls, Caitleen and Baba. They have known each other for most of their lives, and Baba has always been a bit of a bully. When they go to a convent school together (Cait gets a scholarship), Baba decides they are best friends. And she continues to Bully her friend into doing what she (Baba) wants.

      Cait is a hardworking, kind, sweet girl who is also not bright or brave enough to put Baba in her place. After the death of her mother and her father's selling of his inherited property, Cait stays with Baba's family.

      I'm not sure why this book is seen as a classic. Perhaps these girls' lives--poor and not poor, the drinking of so many men, being from the country, educational opportunities for girls, and then their lives in Dublin--is so classic for Ireland at the time?
    • 4/5
      The story of a friendship between two country girls as they enter adolescence in Ireland in the time period after WWII. Kate Brady and Baba Brennen are friends. Kate’s father is an alcoholic and Baba’s father is a veterinarian. Kate is poor and earns a scholarship to a Catholic school. They go together to school where there friendship is strained but then Baba wants them to get kicked out so they are expelled and leave for life in the city. I actually enjoyed this story. It reminded me of Angela’s Ashes for some reason. I listened to audio version, read by the author. She isn’t the best reader nor the worst and her accent gave the story “place”. This book was banned in Ireland because of the sexual content.
    • 5/5
      Country Girls is the first of three novels following an Irish girl from childhood to middle age. It would be wrong to say that this is an autobiographical novel, but its portrayal of an impoverished country childhood, the convent school, and the first steps to independence in 1950´s Dublin could not have been written by anyone who hadn´t been there. The dialog and imagery reaches across half a century with the same expressive power that caused the book to be burnt in Ireland on its first publication. In fact, in todays terms it is not that startling. However it is testimony to the ability of O´Brien to recreate the ścene, that the reader can readily engage with the atmosphere of repression and the small acts of rebellion and liberalism. It has been said that Ireland´s greatest gift to the world is words, and O´Brien´s use of them is brilliant. She reminds me of Brendan Behan, that economical painting of character and scene, and lively dialogue. Altogether a great book, about Ireland, growing up, and young women. It is deservedly placed in more than a few of those lists of the best novels of all time.