OBrien, Edna – The Bell Bookshop

In the Forest

Emma — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The spruces are so close together that the barks are a sable-brown.
Michael O’Kane is known as the ‘Kinderschrek’, the ‘child scarer’. He haunts Cloosh Wood in western Ireland. As a boy he lost his mother and by the age of ten he was in prison. Now he seeks sacrificial victims to satisfy his delusional fantasies: a beautiful young mother, her infant son and a trusting priest, who are enticed into the forest.

Inspired by a real triple homicide, this novel is a ‘tour de force of finely restrained fury’ (Newsday).

Down by the River

Emma — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The road silent, somnolent yet with a speech of its own, speaking back to them, father and child, through trappings of sun and fretted verdure, speaking of the old mutinies and a fresh crime mounting in the blood.

The local community is shocked when a young teenager, Mary, attempts to get an illegal abortion, especially when they discover that she has been raped by her father. O’Brien charts Mary’s emotional and psychological trauma, as her story is dragged first into the public realm and then into the law courts, with her power of choice usurped by militant factions on all sides.

A haunting novel based on a real events.

House of Splendid Isolation

Emma — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

History is everywhere. It seeps into the soil, the sub-soil. Like rain, or hail, or snow, or blood.

Josie O’Grady is an elderly woman, living alone in her dilapidated big house on the outskirts of a rural Irish village. Then one day her bedroom door swings open to reveal McGreevy, an IRA terrorist on a bloody crusade, who has chosen her isolated house for sanctuary. As days pass, these two outsiders develop a grudging respect for each other, which grows into affection and friendship, but the police net is closing in and, with dawning horror, Josie starts to suspect that McGreevy is not only using her house as a refuge.

Based on interviews with the IRA leader Dominic McGlinchy in Portlaoise Prison and published four years before the Good Friday Agreement, this thrilling, political, poetic novel is a portrait of the state of the Irish nation at the height of the Troubles.

The Light of Evening

Emma — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Such is the wrath of the mothers, such is the cry of the mothers, such is the lamentation of the mothers.

Ageing Dilly Macready lies in her hospital bed in Dublin, awaiting a final visit from her estranged daughter, Eleanora, an author who fled rural Ireland years before, after her sensual first novel caused a local scandal. Through memories and journals, both mother and daughter find themselves reliving the strains, disagreements, expectations and disappointments of their complicated relationship, ultimately finding that their enduring connection remains powerful and true.

This is a late novel by O’Brien at the height of her powers, in which she delves deep into the beautiful but intense relationship that exists between mothers and daughters.

Girl

Emma — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

** Winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2020 **
Longlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2020

A Times, Evening Standard and Financial Times Book of the Year

I was a girl once, but not any more . . .

A young woman, barely more than a girl herself, must learn to survive with a child of her own, in a world which seems entirely consumed by madness.

As she navigates a landscape of terrors and trials, can she find a place of safety within a society blinkered by mistrust and denial?

‘Astonishing.’ New Statesman

‘Raw and transfixing.’ Observer

‘Miraculous . . . Extraordinary.’ Mail on Sunday

‘A masterpiece.’ Irish Independent

‘Mesmerising.’ Sunday Times

‘Devastating and moving.’ Daily Telegraph

Country Girls Trilogy

Emma — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Edna O’Brien’s beloved classics plunge us into the lives and loves of two girls in rural 1950s Ireland (with a new foreword by Eimear McBride).

‘The taboo-breaking, the fabulous prose – there’s no one like Edna O’Brien.’ Anne Enright
‘Surprising and beautiful and courageous .. A beacon.‘ Megan Nolan
‘Brilliant and brave.’ Ann Patchett
‘Glittering energy.’ Colm Tóibín

ONE OF THE BBC’S ‘100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD’

Caithleen ‘Kate’ Brady and Bridget ‘Baba’ Brennan are growing up in a repressive Irish village after World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a reckless survivor. After being expelled from convent school, they dream of the bright lights of Dublin – and are rewarded with bad luck and bad sex; marry for the wrong reasons; but continue to fight the expectations forced upon ‘girls’ of every era to become brave new women.

Edna O’Brien’s debut novels revolutionised Irish literature in the 1960s. Banned by the authorities as ‘indecent’ and burned by the clergy, they were notorious for their frank portrayal of sexual desire: but scandal turned to fame, and made this glorious coming-of-age tale an instant classic that inspires and delights readers to this day.

Pagan Place

Emma — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019.

After leaving for a religious community in Belgium, the young woman in A Pagan Place becomes lost in memories of her childhood in rural Ireland, reflecting on the rituals of village life, the people she encountered, the enchanting beauty of the landscape, the concept of home – and the shocking event that led to her departure …

Edna O’Brien’s stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.

Little Red Chairs

Emma — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The legendary Edna O’Brien’s tale of a mysterious stranger spellbinding an Irish village is ‘the kind of masterpiece that reminds you why you read books in the first place’ (Observer).

ONE OF THE SUNDAY TIMES’ TOP 100 NOVELS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

‘Magnificent’ (Sunday Times)
‘Beautiful’ (Financial Times)
‘Enthralling’ (Times)
‘Extraordinary’ (Independent)
‘Astonishing‘ (New Yorker)

When a man who calls himself a faith healer arrives in a small, west-coast Irish village, the community is soon under the spell of this charismatic stranger from the Balkans. One woman in particular, Fidelma McBride, becomes enthralled in a fatal attraction that leads to unimaginable consequences.

‘One of the most interesting and ambitious [books] ever written by an Irish author.’ (Irish Times)
‘One of the greatest Irish writers, of this or any era.’ (Sunday Independent)