Edna O'Brien Summary

Biography EssayAs a contemporary novelist Edna O'Brien is in the unique position of appealing to two audiences: she has attracted the attention of a highbrow literary establishment and of a popular au... Read more

Since the 1950s Edna O'Brien has written many novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, television scripts, several works of nonfiction, and books of children's literature. O'Brien is a major contemp... Read more

In the following essay, Shumaker finds parallels in the treatment of women in stories by Mary Lavin and O'Brien, contending that “the disturbing martyrdoms of the heroines created by bot... Read more

In the following essay, Gillespie views humor as an integral part of O'Brien's short fiction and situates her within the Irish literary comic tradition. Although a desolate, unforgivi... Read more

In the following essay, Shumaker applies theorist Julia Kristeva's “myth of the superior woman” to explicate the troubled mother-daughter relationships in several stories by Irish... Read more

Critical Essay by Anatole Broyard [In "Arabian Days"] Miss O'Brien picks her way through the debris of progress and the buildings that are like boxes waiting to be filled with th... Read more

Critical Essay by Mary Gordon When you call a book A Rose in the Heart you are taking a risk, perhaps a brave one; when you subtitle the same book "Love Stories," you may be approaching... Read more

In the following essay, Haule examines O'Brien's treatment of birth, infancy, childhood, and motherhood in her works. Edna O'Brien's Mother Ireland is a book filled with... Read more

In the following essay, Carriker analyzes O'Brien's "The Doll," in terms of the author's use of the doll as a means of communicating the abjection of the narrator of... Read more

In the following review, Harris offers a laudatory appraisal of Time and Tide. In the prologue of Time and Tide, we learn that the protagonist, Nell, has lost one son to a "watery" de... Read more

In the following review, Hosmer offers a commendatory assessment of Time and Tide. Like Milton's elegy "Lycidas," Edna O'Brien's latest novel, Time and Tide, is a... Read more

In the following review, Lee offers a mixed evaluation of House of Splendid Isolation. "The Ireland you're chasing is a dream … doesn't exist anymore…. It'... Read more

In the following review of Casualties of Peace, Dienstag asserts that O'Brien's "old-fashioned" and clichéd structuring of her novel destroys the effectiveness of he... Read more

In the following essay, Shumaker explores O'Brien's and Mary Lavin's use of martyred. Madonna-inspired women characters in their stories. Edna O'Brien's "A... Read more

In the following review, Mantel offers a favorable assessment of Down by the River, but faults O'Brien for what she perceives as overly pedantic, elaborate prose and a tendency to exhaustively ... Read more

In the following review, Donoghue maintains that A Pagan Place is an "interesting" and "pleasant" novel, but does not "go deep" enough to merit consideration ... Read more

In the following review, Broderick offers a highly unfavorable assessment of Mother Ireland. It is surely no coincidence that most of the Irish writers who have lived out of the country have felt t... Read more

In the following review, Peters surveys the stories in The Fanatic Heart. Reading Edna O'Brien's The Fanatic Heart, an anthology of nearly 20 years of short stories, one sees the same... Read more

In the following essay, Peggy O'Brien explores the psychology behind Edna O'Brien's literary choices and examines the negative critical commentary on her works. An intriguing f... Read more