Girl - Hardcover

O'Brien, Edna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571341160 ISBN 13: 9780571341160

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2019

Synopsis

The Sunday Times bestseller: Girl is the new novel by the legendary Edna O'Brien, author of The Country Girls (dramatised on BBC Radio 4 in August 2019).

Captured, abducted and married into Boko Haram, the narrator of this story witnesses and suffers the horrors of a community of men governed by a brutal code of violence. Barely more than a girl herself, she must soon learn how to survive as a woman with a child of her own. Just as the world around her seems entirely consumed by madness, bound for hell, she is offered an escape of sorts - but only into another landscape of trials and terrors amidst the unforgiving wilds of northeastern Nigeria, through the forest and beyond; a place where her traumas are met with the blinkered judgement of a society in denial.

How do we love in a world that has lost its moorings? How can we comprehend the barbarism of our enemies, and learn forgiveness for atrocities committed in the name of ideology? Edna O'Brien's new novel pierces to the heart of these questions: and the result is her masterpiece.

About this title

Review:

By an extraordinary act of imagination we are transported into the inner world of a girl who, after brutal abuse, escapes and with dogged persistence begins to rebuild her life. Girl is a courageous book about a courageous spirit., J.M. Coetzee

A novel of profound and ever-renewing empathy and grace - a parable on the complex subject of human redemption. Its verbal funds are clear and transporting and unforgettable; its dramatic resources vast., Richard Ford

Girl broke me in two. It is a work of towering humanity and enduring literary value; a hard and beautiful miracle., Eimear McBride

Edna O'Brien tells this story with such compassion and understanding that the very disturbing events she re-lives are uplifting - and unforgettable. An utterly unique achievement., Ian McKellen

An absolutely extraordinary, shattering novel. -- Simon Schama

Mesmerising ... [O'Brien] has set herself one of the greatest challenges a writer can face: to plumb the darkest depths of the human soul. She has triumphantly succeeded. Hypnotic, lyrical and pulsating with dark energy, Girl is a masterful study of human evil by a writer who, at 88, is still getting better. It will blast you with its searing, savage beauty. -- Christina Patterson, Sunday Times

Haunting ... A contemporary story as raw and transfixing as the most visceral Greek tragedy ... Its narrative leavened by deftly wrought moments of maternal intimacy that possess a quiet but almost luminous intensity ... Soul-searing., Observer

[O'Brien's] writing remains as vivid, imaginative and gorgeous as it was in her brilliant youth ... [and displays] the wisdom of maturity. She is not only prepared to tackle big, difficult and controversial subjects from which less bold novelists would shrink, but she addresses them with a wonderful assurance. She is a writer from whom anyone would wish to learn, and one indeed who reminds us that imaginative fiction can illuminate the world and the way we live, feel and think as not even the best non-fiction can. DH Lawrence called the novel "the great book of life;" it is that book which O'Brien opens for us. Read Girl and marvel at its rich humanity. -- Allan Massie, The Scotsman

In Girl, the freshness of her prose is met by the innocence of her narrator and the freedom of her language by the chaos of the events it describes . The life she imagines and presents to the reader is one of unimaginable horror and she does not shy away . O'Brien puts all her might into seeing through her character's young eyes, and this involves forgetting much that she herself knows. The triumph of the book is in the voice of the narrator, who is just as articulate as she might be. The book has a huge storyteller's energy and O'Brien does not patronise - she really has entered the heart of this girl [and] has arrived at some essence of what it is to be vulnerable, female and young. -- Anne Enright, Irish Times

A terrifying, lurching novel ... that keeps faith with the novelist's determination to cross continents and cultures to describe the pain and suffering of women and girls ... Everything that O'Brien does memorably throughout her novels, she does here. There is the blend of economy and lyricism, vignettes tumbling over one another to disorient and energise the reader. There is the intense focus on the emotional lives of women on the sharp end of mental and physical incarceration or constraint, broadening out to sketch in the patriarchal and theocratic structures that hold them there. And there is the constant presence of bodily sensation and distress ... A masterclass of precision and mercilessness ... At 88, O'Brien appears to be more unafraid of experiment and risk than ever ... One can feel one's empathy and understanding to have been enlarged. -- Alex Clark, Guardian

Book Description:

The Sunday Times bestseller: Girl is the new novel by the legendary Edna O'Brien, author of The Country Girls (dramatised on BBC Radio 4 in August 2019).

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0571341160
• ISBN 13: 9780571341160
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240