NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� Edna O'Brien, Ireland's literary pride and outlaw who scandalized her native land with her debut 鈥淭he Country Girls鈥� before gaining international acclaim as a storyteller and iconoclast that found her welcomed everywhere from Dublin to the White House, has died. She was 93.
O'Brien died Saturday after a long illness, according to a statement by her publisher Faber and the literary agency PFD.
鈥淎 defiant and courageous spirit, Edna constantly strove to break new artistic ground, to write truthfully, from a place of deep feeling,鈥� Faber said in a statement. 鈥淭he vitality of her prose was a mirror of her zest for life: she was the very best company, kind, generous, mischievous, brave.鈥� She is survived by her sons, Marcus and Carlos.
O'Brien published more than 20 books, most of them novels and story collections, and would know fully what she called the 鈥渆xtremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success and failure, fame and slaughter.鈥� Few so concretely and poetically challenged Ireland's religious, sexual and gender boundaries. Few wrote so fiercely, so sensually about loneliness, rebellion, desire and persecution.
"O鈥橞rien is attracted to taboos just as they break, to the place of greatest heat and darkness and, you might even say, danger to her mortal soul," Booker Prize winner Anne Enright wrote of her in the Guardian in 2012.
A world traveler in mind and body, O'Brien was as likely to imagine the longings of an Irish nun as to take in a man's 鈥渂oyish smile鈥� in the midst of a 鈥減onderous London club." She befriended movie stars and heads of states while also writing sympathetically about Sinn F茅in leader Gerry Adams and meeting with female farm workers in Nigeria who feared abduction by Boko Haram.
O'Brien was an unknown about to turn 30, living with her husband and two small children outside of London, when 鈥淭he Country Girls鈥� made her Ireland鈥檚 most notorious exile since James Joyce. Written in just three weeks and published in 1960, for an advance of roughly $75, 鈥淭he Country Girls鈥� follows the lives of two young women: Caithleen (Kate) Brady and Bridget (Baba) Brennan journey from a rural convent to the risks and adventures of Dublin. Admirers were as caught up in their defiance and awakening as would-be censors were enraged by such passages as 鈥淗e opened his braces and let his trousers slip down around the ankles鈥� and 鈥淗e patted my knees with his other hand. I was excited and warm and violent."
Fame, wanted or otherwise, was O'Brien's ever after. Her novel was praised and purchased in London and New York while back in Ireland it was labeled 鈥渇ilth" by Minister of Justice Charles Haughey and burned publicly in O'Brien's hometown of Tuamgraney, County Clare. Detractors also included O'Brien's parents and her husband, the author Ernest Gebler, from whom O'Brien was already becoming estranged.
鈥淚 had left the spare copy on the hall table for my husband to read, should he wish, and one morning he surprised me by appearing quite early in the doorway of the kitchen, the manuscript in his hand,鈥� she wrote in her memoir 鈥淐ountry Girl,鈥� published in 2012. 鈥淗e had read it. Yes, he had to concede that despite everything, I had done it, and then he said something that was the death knell of the already ailing marriage 鈥� 鈥榊ou can write and I will never forgive you.鈥欌��
She continued the stories of Kate and Baba in 鈥淭he Lonely Girl鈥� and 鈥淕irls in Their Married Bliss鈥� and by the mid-1960s was single and enjoying the prime of 鈥淪winging London鈥�: whether socializing with Princess Margaret and Marianne Faithfull, or having a fling with actor Robert Mitchum (鈥淚 bet you never tasted white peaches,鈥� he said upon meeting her). Another night, she was escorted home by Paul McCartney, who asked to see her children, picked up her son鈥檚 guitar and improvised a song that included the lines about O鈥橞rien 鈥淪he鈥檒l have you sighing/She鈥檒l have you crying/Hey/She鈥檒l blow your mind away.鈥�
Enright would call O鈥橞rien 鈥渢he first Irish woman ever to have sex. For some decades, indeed, she was the only Irish woman to have had sex 鈥� the rest just had children.鈥�
O鈥橞rien was recognized well beyond the world of books. The 1980s British band Dexy鈥檚 Midnight Runners鈥� named her alongside Eugene O鈥橬eill, Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde among others in the literary tribute 鈥淏urn It Down.鈥� She dined at the White House with then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jack Nicholson, and she befriended Jacqueline Kennedy, whom O鈥橞rien remembered as a 鈥渃reature of paradoxes. While being private and immured she also had a hunger for intimacy 鈥� it was as if the barriers she had put up needed at times to be battered down.鈥�
O鈥橞rien related well to Kennedy鈥檚 reticence, and longing. The literary world gossiped about the author鈥檚 love life, but O鈥橞rien鈥檚 deepest existence was on the page, from addressing a present that seemed without boundaries (鈥淪he longed to be free and young and naked with all the men in the world making her love to her, all at once,鈥� one of her characters thinks) to sorting out a past that seemed all boundaries 鈥� 鈥渢he don鈥檛s and the don鈥檛s and the don鈥檛s.鈥�
In her story 鈥淭he Love Object,鈥� the narrator confronts her lust, and love, for an adulterous family man who need only say her name to make her legs tremble. 鈥淟ong Distance鈥� arrives at the end of an affair as a man and woman struggle to recapture their feelings for each other, haunted by grudges and mistrust.
鈥淟ove, she thought, is like nature but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls,鈥� O鈥橞rien wrote.
鈥淎 Scandalous Woman鈥� follows the stifling of a lively young Irish nonconformist 鈥� part of that 鈥渟mall solidarity of scandalous women who had conceived children without securing fathers鈥� 鈥� and ends with O鈥橞rien鈥檚 condemning her country as a 鈥渓and of shame, a land of murder and a land of strange sacrificial women.鈥� In 鈥淢y Two Mothers,鈥� the narrator prays for the chance to 鈥渂egin our journey all over again, to live our lives as they should have been lived, happy, trusting, and free of shame.鈥�
O鈥橞rien鈥檚 other books included the erotic novel 鈥淎ugust Is a Wicked Month,鈥� which drew upon her time with Mitchum and was banned in parts of Ireland; 鈥淒own By The River,鈥� based on a true story about a teenage Irish girl who becomes pregnant after being raped by her father, and the autobiographical 鈥淭he Light of Evening,鈥� in which a famous author returns to Ireland to see her ailing mother. 鈥淕irl,鈥� a novel about victims of Boko Haram, came out in 2019.
O鈥橞rien is among the most notable authors never to win the Nobel or even the Booker Prize. Her honors did include an Irish Book Award for lifetime achievement, the PEN/Nabokov prize and the Frank O鈥機onnor award in 2011 for her story collection 鈥淪aints and Sinners,鈥� for which she was praised by poet and award judge Thomas McCarthy as 鈥渢he one who kept speaking when everyone else stopped talking about being an Irish woman.鈥�
Josephine Edna O鈥橞rien was one of four children raised on a farm where 鈥渢he relics of riches remained. It was a life full of contradictions. We had an avenue, but it was full of potholes; there was a gatehouse, but another couple lived there.鈥� Her father was a violent alcoholic, her mother a talented letter writer who disapproved of her daughter鈥檚 profession, possibly out of jealousy. Lena O鈥橞rien鈥檚 hold on her daughter鈥檚 imagination, the force of her regrets, made her a lifelong muse and a near stand-in Ireland itself, 鈥渢he cupboard with all things in it, the tabernacle with God in it, the lake with the legends in it.鈥�
Like Kate and Baba in 鈥淭he Country Girls,鈥� O鈥橞rien was educated in part at a convent, 鈥渄our years鈥� made feverish by a disorienting crush she developed on one of the nuns. Language, too, was a temptation, and signpost, like the words she came upon on the back of her prayer book: 鈥淟ord, rebuke me not in thy wraith, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.鈥�
鈥淲hat did it mean?鈥� she remembered thinking. 鈥淚t didn鈥檛 matter what it meant. It would carry me through lessons and theorems and soggy meat and cabbage, because now, in secret, I had been drawn into the wild heart of things.鈥�
By her early 20s, she was working in a pharmacy in Dublin and reading Tolstoy and Thackeray among others in her spare time. She had dreams of writing since sneaking out to nearby fields as a child to work on stories, but doubted the relevance of her life until she read a Joyce anthology and learned that 鈥淧ortrait of the Artist as a Young Man鈥� was autobiographical. She began writing fiction that ran in the literary magazine The Bell and found work reviewing manuscripts for the publishing house Hutchinson, where editors were impressed enough by her summaries to commission what became 鈥淭he Country Girls.鈥�
鈥淚 cried a lot writing 鈥楾he Country Girls,鈥� but scarcely noticed the tears. Anyhow, they were good tears. They touched on feelings that I did not know I had. Before my eyes, infinitely clear, came that former world in which I believed our fields and hollows had some old music slumbering in them, centuries old,鈥� she wrote in her memoir.
鈥淭he words poured out of me, and the pen above the paper was not moving fast enough, so that I sometimes feared they would be lost forever.鈥�
Hillel Italie, The Associated Press
