Collected here for the first time are stories spanning five decades of writing by the "short story master" ( Harold Bloom ). As John Banville writes in his introduction to The Love Object , Edna O'Brien "is, simply, one of the finest writers of our time." The thirty-one stories collected in this volume provide, among other things, a cumulative portrait of Ireland, seen from within and without. Coming of age, the impact of class, and familial and romantic love are the prevalent motifs, along with the instinct toward escape and subsequent nostalgia for home. Some of the stories are linked and some carry O'Brien's distinct sense of the comical. In "A Rose in the Heart of New York," the single-mindedness of love dramatically derails the relationship between a girl and her mother, while in "Sister Imelda" and "The Creature" the strong ties between teacher and student and mother and son are ultimately broken. "The Love Object" recounts a passionate affair between the narrator and her older lover. The magnificent, mid-career title story from Lantern Slides portrays a Dublin dinner party that takes on the lives and loves of all the guests. More recent stories include "Shovel Kings" -- "a masterpiece of compression, distilling the pain of a lost, exiled generation" (Sunday Times) -- and "Old Wounds," which follows the revival and demise of the friendship between two elderly cousins. In 2011, Edna O'Brien's gifts were acknowledged with the most prestigious international award for the story, the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. The Love Object illustrates a career's worth of shimmering, potent prose from a writer of great courage, vision, and heart. "The most striking aspect of Edna O'Brien's short stories, aside from the consistent mastery with which they are executed, is their diversity."-John Banville
The classic plays of the quintessential Dublin playwright Three early plays by Sean O'Casey--arguably his three greatest--demonstrate vividly O'Casey's ability to convey the reality of life and the depth of human emotion, specifically in Dublin before and during the Irish civil war of 1922-23, but, truly, throughout the known universe. In mirroring the lives of the Dublin poor, from the tenement dwellers in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock to the bricklayer, street vendor, and charwoman in The Plough and the Stars , Sean O'Casey conveys with urgency and eloquence the tiny details that create a total character as well as the terrors, large and small, that the constant threat of political violence inevitably brings. As Seamus Heaney has written, "O'Casey's characters are both down to earth and larger than life . . . His democratic genius was at one with his tragic understanding, and his recoil from tyranny and his compassion for the oppressed were an essential--as opposed to a moral and thematic--part of his art." A new production of Juno and the Paycock will transfer from the Donmar Theatre in London to New York in September 2000.
Garden City, New Doubleday,, 1979.. Very near fine in a like dustjacket.(faint remainder spray bottom edge.). First US printing. SIGNED on the title page. A collection of 12 short stories about love and relationships by this wonderful Irish writer. 287 pp.
In these selections from twenty years of her best short fiction, Edna O'Brien's A Fanatic Heart pulls the reader into a woman's experience. Her stories portray a young Irish girl's view of obsessive love and its often wrenching pain, while tales of contemporary life show women who open themselves to sexuality, to disappointment, to madness. Throughout, there is always O'Brien's voice―wondrous, despairing, moving―examining passionate subjects that lay bare the desire and needs that can be hidden in a woman's heart.
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction “Superb...[ Lantern Slides ] continues the quest for origin and explanation that has preoccupied O’Brien...Her stories unearth the primeval feelings buried just below the surface of nostalgia, using memories to illuminate both what is ridiculous and what is heroic about passion.” ―David Leavitt, The New York Times Book Review “Her stories are brilliantly realized and often very funny...O’Brien is quite simply one of the finest short story writers of our time.” ―Joyce Carol Oates A newly reissued collection of stories from the author of Girl , “one of the most celebrated writers in the English language” (NPR’s Weekend Edition ) In twelve stories peopled with deeply etched characters, whom we come to know instantly and intimately, Lantern Slides reveals the wit and passion of a master of the short fiction form. Rich and humorous, full of struggle and boldness, these stories are a singular reflection of Edna O’Brien’s artistry.
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
A first rate collection of short stories from the critically acclaimed author of House of Splendid isolation and Down by the RiverWhen all the convent girls were in love with Clark Gable...When bachelors rose on lonely bicycles, and jam was a luxury...In this excellent collection of short stories, Edna O'Brien powerfully evokes the sensations of childhood and adolescence in Ireland - the smells and tastes , the fears and joys, the sadness and the confusions.
Three women (mistress, wife, and daughter) uncover their passion for the same man and confront the ways that love can simultaneously liberate and entrap. This lyrical and captivating drama weaves together their stories to construct the portrait of a man through the eyes of the women who love him.
With her inimitable gift for describing the workings of the heart and mind, Edna O'Brien introduces us to a vivid new cast of restless, searching people who-whether in the Irish countryside or London or New York-remind us of our own humanity. In Send My Roots Rain , Miss Gilhooley, a librarian, waits in the lobby of a posh Dublin hotel-expecting to meet a celebrated poet while reflecting on the great love who disappointed her. The Irish workers of "The Shovel Kings" have pipe dreams of becoming millionaires in London, but long for their quickly changing homeland-exiles in both places. "Green Georgette" is a searing anatomy of class, through the eyes of a little girl; "Old Wounds" illuminates the importance of family and memory in old age. In language that is always bold and vital, Edna O'Brien pays tribute to the universal forces that rule our lives.