The Country Girls: Three Novels and an Epilogue: (The Country Girl; The Lonely Girl; Girls in Their Married Bliss; Epilogue)

Description

A treasure of world literature back in print, featuring a new introduction by Eimear McBride

This omnibus edition includes the novels The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, and Girls in Their Married Bliss.

The country girls are Caithleen “Kate” Brady and Bridget “Baba” Brennan, and their story begins in the repressive atmosphere of a small village in the west of Ireland in the years following World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a survivor. Setting out to conquer the bright lights of Dublin, they are rewarded with comical miscommunications, furtive liaisons, bad faith, bad luck, bad sex, and compromise; marrying for the wrong reasons, betraying for the wrong reasons, fighting in their separate ways against the overwhelming wave of expectations forced upon “girls” of every era.

The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue charts unflinchingly the pattern of women’s lives, from the high spirits of youth to the chill of middle age, from hope to despair, in remarkable prose swinging from blunt and brutal to whimsical and lyrical. It is a saga both painful and hilarious, and remains one of the major accomplishments of Edna O’Brien’s extraordinary career.

Binding Type: Paperback
Contributors: Edna O’Brien, Eimear McBride (Introduction by)
Published: 11/14/2017
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9780374537357
Pages: 560
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 1.60″ H x 8.10″ L x 5.50″ W

About the Author
Edna O’Brien (1930-2024) was the author of more than twenty-five works of fiction, including The Country Girls, The Little Red Chairs, and The Light of Evening. She received numerous awards, including the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the National Arts Club Medal of Honor, and the Ulysses Medal. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, she lived in London for many years.