Wild Colonial Girl: Essays on Edna O'Brien (Irish Studies in Literature & Culture): Essays on Edna O'Brien (Irish Studies in Literature & Culture)

Since the 1960 publication of her first novel, The Country Girls , award-winning Irish writer Edna O'Brien has been both celebrated and maligned. Praised for her lyrical prose and vivid female characters and attacked for her frank treatment of sexuality and alleged sensationalism, O'Brien and her work seem always to spawn controversy, including the past banning in Ireland of several of her works. O'Brien's attention to "women's" concerns such as sex, romance, marriage, and childbirth has often relegated her to critical neglect at best and, at worst, outright contempt. This essay collection promises to be a long overdue critical reevaluation and exciting rediscovery of her oeuvre. Wild Colonial Girl situates O'Brien in Irish contexts that allow for an appraisal of her significant contribution to a specifically Irish women's literary tradition while attesting to the potency of writing against patriarchal conventions. Each chapter's clear and detailed readings of O'Brien's fiction build a convincing case for her literary, political, and cultural importance, providing an invaluable critical guide for an enriched appreciation of O'Brien and her work. Open this book and you are in Door County, Wisconsin, strolling down Coot Lake Road a one-lane, dead-end gravel track just a few miles from Baileys Harbor and the Lake Michigan shore. Along the way you meet George and Helen O Malley, who are growing old gracefully. Russell, their brave and empathetic golden retriever, wags hello and offers you a paw to shake. The Olsons and the Berges live just down the road. Bump Olson is the local septic tank pumper and birdwatcher extraordinaire, and Hans Berge, MD, PhD, was at one time the only Norwegian psychiatrist in Chicago or so he says. In a cottage out by the highway, you may spot Lloyd Barnes, ex Tennessee state trooper, hound fancier, and local man of mystery. Uncle Petter Sorenson, visiting from Grand Forks, takes the polar bear plunge at Jacksonport. Around the neighborhood you ll meet Deputy Doug, the flirtatious cellist Debbie Dombrowski, and Italian import Rosa Zamboni. Dave Crehore s sketches of life on the Door peninsula also expound the delights of codfish pizza how to insult Canadians what to expect at your fiftieth high school reunion how to lose a school board election the prevention of creeping old-fogyism Marilyn, a buxom eight-pound smallmouth bass and what goes on in the winter, when no one is there. "

    Since the 1960 publication of her first novel, The Country Girls, award-winning Irish writer Edna O'Brien has been both celebrated and maligned. Praised for her lyrical prose and vivid female characters and attacked for her frank treatment of sexuality and alleged sensationalism, O'Brien and her work seem always to spawn controversy, including the past banning in Ireland of several of her works. O'Brien's attention to "women's" concerns such as sex, romance, marriage, and childbirth has often relegated her to critical neglect at best and, at worst, outright contempt. This essay collection promises to be a long overdue critical reevaluation and exciting rediscovery of her oeuvre.
    Wild Colonial Girl situates O'Brien in Irish contexts that allow for an appraisal of her significant contribution to a specifically Irish women's literary tradition while attesting to the potency of writing against patriarchal conventions. Each chapter's clear and detailed readings of O'Brien's fiction build a convincing case for her literary, political, and cultural importance, providing an invaluable critical guide for an enriched appreciation of O'Brien and her work.

In the name of the mother : reading and revision in Edna O'Brien's Country girls trilogy and epilogue / Kristine Byron Hysterical hooliganism / Helen Thompson Edna O'Brien's "love objects" / Rebecca Pelan Edna O'Brien and the lives of James Joyce / Michael Patrick Gillespie Godot land : Sister Imelda / Wanda Balzano Blurring boundaries : House of splendid isolation / Danine Farquharson, Bernice Schrank On the side of life / Sophia Hillan.