Irish President Michael D Higgins has led the tributes following the death of internationally acclaimed Tuamgraney novelist, Edna O’Brien, (93), describing her as “one of the outstanding writers of modern times”.
“Edna was a fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed,” he said.
“Through that deeply insightful work, rich in humanity, Edna O’Brien was one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland in their different generations and played an important role in transforming the status of women across Irish society.”
“While the beauty of her work was immediately recognised abroad, it is important to remember the hostile reaction it provoked among those who wished for the lived experience of women to remain far from the world of Irish literature, with her books shamefully banned upon their early publication.”
Paying tribute to the author, publishing house Faber said she was “one of the greatest writers of our age”.
“She revolutionised Irish literature, capturing the lives of women and the complexities of the human condition in prose that was luminous and spare, and which had a profound influence on so many writers who followed her.”
“A defiant and courageous spirit, Edna constantly strove to break new artistic ground, to write truthfully, from a place of deep feeling. The vitality of her prose was a mirror of her zest for life: she was the very best company, kind, generous, mischievous, brave. Edna was a dear friend to us all, and we will miss her dreadfully. It is Faber’s huge privilege to publish her, and her bold and brilliant body of work lives on.”
Former Clare County Council chairman, Pat Hayes, who proposed the renaming of Scariff Library to the Edna O’Brien Library last January, which came to fruition last May, was saddened to hear of her passing.
“Edna O’Brien leaves a lasting legacy to the world of literature. I am extremely thankful to Enda and her family for allowing us to name the library in Scariff in her honour,” he said.
Clare County Librarian, Helen Walsh, expressed her delight in having the library named after such an influential author whose “reputation is applauded internationally and is now recognised in her home place”.
In a statement supplied by Ms O’Brien last May, she joked she hoped the library doesn’t fall down.
“Why did I love it? Because I learned bits of poems, bits of history and bits of folklore that I would otherwise have not known or gone towards.
“I read extracts of great books and loved recitation. The Midnight Court in Irish was one of my favourites. I don’t think it was very sociable. I liked to have others around me, rather than the silence at home and I came across some of the more vivid accounts in Irish history.
“I make it sound idyllic, which it was not but it was a contrast to home life and it was a stepping stone to worlds beyond. I don’t think I will ever forget reading Thoreau’s description of snow.
“It enhanced my vision of snow and how one can both exaggerate and be truthful at the same time. I suppose I could say I exaggerate but that is what memory does.
“One can be truthful and untruthful at the same time. By that I mean, one can aspire to becoming a writer.
“As is now evident, I was not quite rational. But buildings and walls and places carry in them the stories that came before. So I have good memories of my time there and of what was instilled in me,” she stated.
During a civic ceremony to rename the library, Ms O’Brien was described as”Ireland’s greatest living writer” by a Shannon woman with a PhD in Literature from the University of Limerick who chronicled her outstanding legacy to the written word.
Tracy McAvinue described Ms O’Brien as being Ireland’s greatest living writer, or the most gifted woman now writing in English, while former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson cited her as “one of the great creative writers of her generation”.
She stated Ms O’Brien’s legacy is the impact of her work “reaching into hidden places, pulling out the truth, to ask us to question and demand more of ourselves”.
Edna O’Brien was a novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet, short story writer, polemicist; and a prolific writer. Her ‘published’ works include 18 novels, eight non-fiction texts, including the biographies and her own memoir Country Girl in 2012, eight short story collections, eight plays, one screenplay, four children’s books, and one poetry collection.
She has received numerous awards such as the Irish Pen Award in 2001, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award in 2011, and was elected to Aosdána and honoured with the title Saoi in 2015.
In 2018, she was appointed an honorary Dame of the Order of the British Empire, and the David Cohen Prize, often referred to as the “UK and Ireland Nobel” in 2019, while France made her Commanedeur de L’Order des Arts et des Lettres in 2021.
In 2004, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Limerick in 2004.
Ms Avinue recalled Edna O’Brien has long been lauded for gifting people with some of the most observational, and descriptive prose, mastering the balance between precision and lyricism of language, and those wonderfully vivid, memorable characters.
Her writing career spans over six-decades and has seen her make her literary way from rural Ireland to 1960s London, to France, to northeastern Nigeria, with works that centre on topics from the rich inner lives of women, to state of the nation pieces, and her brilliant 2019 novel “Girl”, a portrayal of the young women abducted by Boko Haram.
“As a writer, she is steadfast in her commitment to write about difficult or controversial topics, sometimes making readers uncomfortable as she speaks out, tells those uncomfortable truths, gives voice to the voiceless.
“Last year, on receiving the David Cohen prize for literature, she was praised for having “moved mountains both politically and lyrically through her writing”.
“She is not afraid to ask questions, to challenge; this is central to her legacy. And she received quite the backlash for her work – with The Country Girls in the 1960s, she rendered public those hitherto, largely silent, frustrations of women.
“Her debut novel was banned, and castigated from the pulpit for its frank portrayal of the sexuality of its characters, Baba and Kate. It didn’t stop there, nor did it stop her. I think she single-handedly kept many in the Irish censorship board in steady employment for quite a few years. The criticism she received was harsh and relentless and often personal and came from numerous sources, and it was especially difficult for her.
“In an interview in 2020, recalling the criticism and the apology she received from President Michael D Higgins for the treatment, she said “What I was hurt about was when attacks were about me rather than about what people were reading”.
Ms Mc Avinue said Ms O’Brien battled on against such opposition, and in continuing to challenge, she broke down social and sexual barriers for women and changed the literary landscape.
As Eimear McBride perfectly put it: “The Country Girls, the quintessential tale of Irish girlhood, is not the novel that broke the mould, it is the one that made it”.
“Throughout her life, she has done both; challenged, dismantled, and kept writing, kept having that impact, and in turn changed the discourse on women’s rights, women’s sexuality, women’s place.
Her work is era defining, and representations by and of women were changed from then – they had to be.
“Despite the backlash she received over the years, and because of her talent and tenacity, and likely much to the annoyance of those who opposed her writing, Edna O’Brien has gone on to become a huge success internationally. And while the controversies and opposition she received are an important part of her story, it should never be the story – this happens with women writers – think of Sylvia Plath –- they, their brilliant work, can become overshadowed by just a part of their story.
“The controversy is not the legacy of Edna O’Brien, her legacy is the impact of her work. Her writing reaches into those hidden places and pulls out the truth, it asks us to question, to demand more for ourselves,” Ms Avinue stated.
Bringing people into the everyday lives of her characters, Ms Avinue recalled Ms O’Brien was often criticised for focusing on the invaluable social history of what was happening in people’s lives often in the homes with the larger historical events as a backdrop.
“With Edna O’Brien’s work, we get this beautifully evoked sense of what life was like, in The Country Girls, as an example, how the religious, the political, the culture of Ireland in the 1960s, was felt. As she said herself in 1992 “Language is my tool, I want words to breathe on the page, but feeling is my agenda”.
“For me, I’m a child of the 80s and early 90s, but this, The Country Girls, is the world of my mother, of my aunts – they came from a religious home, rural Ireland – I remember reading The Country Girls as part of my course and talking to her about it, about what it was like for her, her sisters, her friends. Her writing gives us that insight.
“We can read novels like hers and reflect on what things were like for many women, reflect on Ireland’s journey, how far we’ve come, how far we have to go. Writer Andrew O’Hagan said “She changed the nature of Irish fiction; she brought the woman’s experience and sex and internal lives of those people on to the page, and she did it with style, and she made those concerns international.”
“There’s a really touching scene in The Country Girls that I remembered, when thinking about today and her impact on women’s writing, on Irish writing.
“To set context, Kate’s mother has died, and she and Baba, 14 years of age, have moved to a Catholic boarding school. The only item she brought from home was a small china tea set, and this is intimately tied to the memory of her mother.
“On her first night—it’s everyone’s first night, a nun cruelly confiscates the tea set. It’s dark in the dormitory. She writes: “I got in between the icy sheets and ate a piece of seed cake. The whole dormitory was crying. You could hear this sobbing and choking under the covers. Smothered crying. The head of my bed backed on to the head of another girls bed, and in the dark a hand came through the rungs and put a bun on my pillow. It was an iced bun and there was something on top of the icing. Possibly a cherry. I gave her a piece of cake and we shook hands,” Ms McAvinue outlined.”
Edna O’Brien’s work, her legacy, is like the hand, in solidarity, reaching out in the dark. The bun with the cherry on top is the sweetness of her captivating characters and the beautiful lyricism of her prose.
“Edna O’Brien has often been profiled, in various news articles over the years, as having quite sensationally detached from her family, her home, Ireland.
“While she has been open about her disagreements with Ireland, this is an inaccurate reflection of her relationship to her home, and one she has refuted, many many times.
“Much like James Joyce, a writer she hugely admires, while she lives away, she has always maintained a dynamic connection with Ireland, and her childhood home,” she said.
Ms O’Brien once referenced Flannery O’Connor’s statement that: “if you’re going to write, you’d better come from somewhere”, and added her own strong sense of this.
In a recent interview with the National Library of Ireland, where she donated her papers, she said:
“I am Irish, I was born in Ireland, my remains will go to Ireland. Ireland as a young child, as a girl, fed me, imaginatively and emotionally, Ireland remains my imaginative font”.
Despite spending her adult life living away from her childhood home, Ms McAvinue said O’Brien might say, like Joyce said, “People ask why I never went back and my answer is, ‘Have I ever left it?’”
Ms O’Brien has occasionally been referred to as something of a “party girl”, another problematic labelling, and one she disagrees with, acknowledging she’s had her time of fun but, counters this with the point that it would not be possible to sustain that kind of lifestyle while raising her children and writing as prolifically as she has.
She has mingled with a long list of well-known and celebrated individuals from literary and entertainment circles, who she has genuinely close friendships. Ms Avinue shared a story that nicely encapsulates her humour. Sir Ian McKellen threw a party in celebration of her.
She was of course in great spirits at this event that was attended by many of her well known and close friends. The centrepiece of the party was this mountain of cakes, and each one of these was decorated with a picture of her at different ages. Everyone was gathered around, admiring these.
She turned to Bianca Jagger, and with a classic quip, so characteristic of her writing, said ‘I won’t be having them,’ ‘Got to watch the old figure. Can’t give the begrudgers an opening’.
Dan Danaher
East Clare correspondent, Dan Danaher is a journalism graduate of Rathmines and UL. He has won numerous awards for special investigations on health, justice, environment, and reports on news, agriculture, disability, mental health and community.