Kate O'Brien and the Fiction of Identity

Kate O'Brien and the Fiction of Identity
Author: Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786456779

Kate O'Brien's work is now widely considered canonical in the English language, and the author herself an icon for Ireland seeking to reinvent itself. O'Brien's novel Mary Lavelle, banned upon publication in 1936, is a key work of the twentieth century that has suffered from critical neglect despite its wider popularity with readers. This book reexamines Mary Lavelle, exploring its role in the modernist canon and its importance to political and queer activism. The novel's biographical and autobiographical experimentation is of particular note. Through the lens of this crucial novel, the oeuvre of Kate O'Brien is recontextualized and reassessed.

The Land Of Spices

The Land Of Spices
Author: Kate O'Brien
Publisher: Virago
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2016-05-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0349008809

AN AWARD-WINNING AND REMARKABLE IRISH NOVELIST 'This subtle and beautifully constructed novel deals with the conflict between human and divine love' SUNDAY TIMES 'If novels can be music, this is a novel with perfect pitch' CLARE BOYLAN 'A fuller appreciation of modern literature and a greater understanding of twentieth century Ireland' IRISH TIMES Mere Marie-Helene once turned her back on life, sealing up her heart in order to devote herself to God. Now the formidable Mother Superior of an Irish convent, she has, for some time, been experiencing grave doubts about her vocation. But when she meets Anna Murphy, the youngest-ever boarder, the little girl's solemn, poetic nature captivates her and she feels 'a storm break in her hollow heart'. Between them an unspoken allegiance is formed that will sustain each through the years as the Reverend Mother seeks to combat her growing spiritual aridity and as Anna develops the strength to resist the conventional demands of her background.

Kate O'Brien and Spanish Literary Culture

Kate O'Brien and Spanish Literary Culture
Author: Jane Davison
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2017-10-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0815654138

One of the most important Irish novelists of the twentieth century, Kate O’Brien (1897–1974) was also a pioneer of women’s writing. In a career that spanned almost fifty years, nine novels, nine plays, two travelogues, and copious criticism, O’Brien rebelled against the narrow nationalism and restrictive Catholicism prevalent in independent Ireland. In this highly original approach to O’Brien’s work, Davison traces the influence of three leading Spanish writers—Jacinto Benavente, Miguel de Cervantes, and Teresa of Avila. O’Brien’s lifelong fascination with Spanish literature and culture offered an oblique way of resisting the Catholic and conservative imperatives of the Irish Free State. In a series of close comparative readings, Davison identifies the origin of O’Brien’s creative disinhibition and ultimately situates her within a tradition of dissident Irish women writers.

The Land of Spices

The Land of Spices
Author: Kate O'Brien
Publisher: Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, Doran 1941.
Total Pages: 320
Release: 1941
Genre: Nuns
ISBN:

The Mother Superior of an Irish convent reviews her life in flashbacks and makes a psychological study of herself.

Space and Irish Lesbian Fiction

Space and Irish Lesbian Fiction
Author: Amy Jeffrey
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2022-06-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000594483

Space and Irish Lesbian Fiction offers an original and much-needed study of Irish Lesbian fiction. Evaluating a wide body of Irish lesbian fiction ranging from the Victorian era to the contemporary age, this book advocates for women writers who have been largely ignored in Irish literary history and criticism. This volume examines the use and applications of space in Irish lesbian fiction. In recent years, it can be argued that Irish society has created a new ‘space’ for LGBT or queer people. The concept of space is, thus, important both symbolically and physically for lesbian literature. In asking, if Irish women writers have moved ‘out of the shadows’ so to speak, what space is open to the Irish lesbian author? How is spatiality reflected in lesbian representation throughout Irish literary history? Space and Irish Lesbian Fiction examines a diverse range of writers from the nineteenth century to the contemporary age, evaluating the contributions of largely unknown authors who have been overlooked alongside more established voices within Irish literature. The concept of liminality that this volume takes as its theme and focus engage with notions of intersectionality, thresholds, crossings and transitions. In suggesting the overlap between the indeterminate threshold of the liminal space and its ambiguously queer potentiality to examine the dynamics of space and its relationship to lesbianism, this ground-breaking project both locates and charts spaces of queer liminality in Irish lesbian fiction.

Girl

Girl
Author: Edna O'Brien
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374721386

Girl, Edna O’Brien’s hotly anticipated new novel, envisages the lives of the Boko Haram girls in a masterpiece of violence and tenderness. I was a girl once, but not anymore. So begins Girl, Edna O’Brien’s harrowing portrayal of the young women abducted by Boko Haram. Set in the deep countryside of northeast Nigeria, this is a brutal story of incarceration, horror, and hunger; a hair-raising escape into the manifold terrors of the forest; and a descent into the labyrinthine bureaucracy and hostility awaiting a victim who returns home with a child blighted by enemy blood. From one of the century's greatest living authors, Girl is an unforgettable story of one victim’s astonishing survival, and her unflinching faith in the redemption of the human heart.

Ireland and Dysfunction

Ireland and Dysfunction
Author: Asier Altuna-García de Salazar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443864080

This collection of critical essays finds itself at the intersection of cultural, literary and film studies, and explores the various ways in which dysfunction is expressed in Irish studies. Dysfunction can be regarded as part and parcel of a portrayal of a landscape of trauma and crisis that may have been traditionally repressed in Ireland at large. However, dysfunction also envisages mediation, managing, transcending and healing. As such, this volume examines how Ireland tackles dysfunction at large, but more importantly, how mediation, managing, healing and transcending help in the understanding of the ever-changing and on-going process of the construction of an Irish identity today; sometimes looking back at the past, but always creating the need of inventing new ways to understand the future of Ireland. The collection presents essays which tackle dysfunction from different and multifarious perspectives that range from sociological, historical and literary discourses to more contemporary insights into dysfunction in today’s Ireland. It encompasses theory and analysis and includes the works of both senior academics and emerging scholars, as well as those outside academia.

Farewell Spain

Farewell Spain
Author: Kate O'Brien
Publisher: Little Brown and Company (UK)
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2006
Genre:
ISBN: 9781844084029

This distinctly personal elegy was written during the early days of the Spanish Civil War by a writer whose future was indelibly marked by a year of travelling in a unique and changing country. A series of reminiscences, impressions and vivid insights, Kate O'Brien's thoughtful journey offers something unique at every stage, and captures perfectly the spirit of a lost place and the experience of travel and memory.

I Know Just What You Mean

I Know Just What You Mean
Author: Ellen Goodman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2001-05-02
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 074320171X

Now in paperback, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Goodman and novelist/journalist O'Brien take a thoughtful and deeply personal look at the enduring bonds of friendship between women.