The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
Tuamgraney’s internationally acclaimed novelist Edna O’Brien has been buried in Holy Island in keeping with a request she made to her family years ago. In the region of 150 mourners were ferried from Knockphort, Mountshannon to this picturesque monastic site by numerous boats with assistance from Clare Civil Defence volunteers and under the watchful eye of the Killaloe Coast Guard and the RNLI. Chief Celebrant Fr Donagh O’Meara described Ms O’Brien as an “extraordinary woman” and “speaker of truth” who held up a mirror to Irish society during her Funeral Mass in St Joseph’s Church, Tuamgraney on Saturday. “We didn’t thank her for it. Like a lot of prophetesses of the past, we undermined her, we isolated her and rejected her message and she must have deeply felt that,” he admitted in reference to the fact that her debut novel Country Girls was banned and burned in East Clare in 1960. He noted that it must have been …
Read More »