The Love Object: Selected Stories, by Edna O'Brien
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The Love Object: Selected Stories, by Edna O'Brien
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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 Love Object: Selected Stories, by Edna O'Brien - Amazon Sales Rank: #247024 in Books
- Brand: Little, Brown and Company
- Published on: 2015-05-05
- Released on: 2015-05-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.75" w x 6.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 544 pages
The Love Object: Selected Stories, by Edna O'Brien Review "When a writer as gifted as O'Brien memorializes a vanishing world, we experience not only the 'lost landscape' but the richly ambivalent emotions it has evoked."―Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement"Every one of the stories included is a shining example of a master at work."―Lucy Scholes, ObserverAs well as being an intensely enjoyable book, it is a very important publication in the history of Irish literature: the selected stories of one of the major writers of our era."―Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Irish Times"A career's selection of stories to savor.... Hers is not the sort of writing that indulges in what one story dismisses as 'clever words and hollow feelings'; her stories ask impossibly difficult questions about the nature of love and the possibility of happiness, and they refuse to settle for easy answers.... This collection positions O'Brien among the literary heavyweights, where it confirms she belongs."―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"O'Brien is an Irish natural treasure, having secured a place in the pantheon of top-notch twentieth-century Irish writers of fiction.... What we see now is what was always there, brilliant prose couched in extremely creative and greatly relevant story lines presenting well-understood and broadly understandable characters.... O'Brien succeeds with genius-level ingenuity in producing short stories achingly effective."―Brad Hooper, Booklist (starred review)"Majestic, heart-crossed tales about women...marked by their modern sensibilities and indomitable spirits."―Elle"Tales that gleam like rare artifacts."―Megan O'Grady, Vogue"A cause for celebration."―Jane Ciabattari, BBC"Majestic, heart-crossed tales."―Lisa Shea, ELLE.com"In this landmark collection of short fiction, Irish master Edna O'Brien gorgeously explores the complexities of her characters and the land that engendered them."―Cathleen Medwick, More"When O'Brien ranges farther into the lives of women and men, married and single, beyond the borders of Ireland, she describes longing and desire and the intricacies of love and adultery as keenly and memorably as any modern writer you'll read.... The lyrical turnings of her quest for truth, the deftness of her sentences and the clinical eye she turns on the imprisoning values of her country hark back to Joyce, modern Ireland's old artificer. All together, they make O'Brien the first female bard of the place she bitterly names as 'a land of shame, a land of murder, and a land of sacrificial women.' O'Brien's 84 now, and eventually she herself will be gone. But her stories will linger - not just smoldering, but burning as fiercely as when they first appeared."―Alan Cheuse, NPR"The confidence and authority of Ms. O'Brien's writing, and the humor and sexiness that flow through it, mark her as a figure at the top of the food chain. The Love Object...consolidates this position. It's a book of deep and complicated and sometimes rude pleasures.... It's tempting to remark that sex and class and vanity and disappointment are Ms. O'Brien's central themes, but that's a hollow statement - those are all of our themes, mine at least, and probably yours, too. What matters is how consistently observant she is about them, how her sentences ring and ring again. There are echoes of James Joyce's stories and of William Trevor's, but the sound is unmistakably her own."―Dwight Garner, New York Times"The Love Object is less a catalog than a kind of humanist Rosary-and each bead, each story, is a prayer, a meditation, a supplication, a lament, a confession. We rub the hard beads between soft fingers, not as a gesture of intellectual decoding, but as an act of sensing, feeling our way into O'Brien's created lives, the mysteries of common human experience, where the everyday is profound and gently affecting, and the profane becomes sacred."―Earl Pike, Cleveland Plain Dealer"Brilliant and memorable.... There is a harmony among all these stories that makes a whole."―John Casey, New York Times Book Review, "100 Notable Books of 2015""Gorgeous, meticulously rendered short stories, probing the psyches of an intriguing cast of widows, mistresses, sleepwalkers and nuns."―Sarah Meyer, Oprah.com"Put on a pot of tea and curl up with The Love Object, the new collection of Edna O'Brien stories. If you're lucky, it'll be cold, damp and misty outside.... The Irish writer John Banville calls O'Brien 'the poet of vulnerability,' and while it's true that many of her characters are wounded, reading about them is often exhilarating because of her prodigious ability to capture both the beauty and the sorrows of the world."―Associated Press"O'Brien writes like an angel.... There's a hint of William Trevor's Irish grimness in the background to these stories, a touch of Flann O'Brien's Irish madness, and more than a bit of Virginia Woolf's sensitivity to the stream of women's consciousness.... The Love Object demonstrates just how good Edna O'Brien is."―Joseph Bottum, Washington Free Beacon"The Love Object is more than a short-story collection, it's an encyclopedia of perfect storytelling and a retrospective on the fifty-year career of a writer of exquisite finesse and pathos.... O'Brien has taken a great deal of time over these small works of art. They are finely wrought pieces with vivid details, sparingly rendered. The sentences are buffed to a polish, the symbolic images (a green georgette evening gown, a mossy cave, an undercooked fowl) so finely worked, their seams are invisible."―Jennifer Wilder, BookBrowse"O'Brien's reputation as one of the greatest storytellers in modern literature is only strengthened by this volume's publication."―John G. Matthews, Library Journal"Read a bunch of stories by the same writer, and you come away with a portrait of a mind in mosaic-if she's not much good, the cracks will soon show; if she is, you're privy to something exquisite. The latter is the case with The Love Object.... O'Brien's mastery reveals itself in any number of ways."―Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker"An Ireland gripped by tradition and change finds illumination in O'Brien's brilliant and memorable tales."―New York Times Book Review, "Editors' Choice""Finely wrought stories.... Especially good for fans of Alice Munro, William Trevor and Mavis Gallant."―Tom Beer, Newsday"Doyenne or jezebel, Ireland's Edna O'Brien is a master.... The Love Object presents us with the very finest of her short stories-31 examples of her shimmering prose, spanning her career. Presented together in one volume, the end result is a staggering achievement: a masterclass in the form, each story a perfectly polished work of art, complete and fully realized on a miniature scale.... One of the wonderful things about The Love Object is how one can trace the developments in O'Brien's career through its pages, watching the subtle shift between these earlier narratives of female experience and her later work that addresses the broader issues of Irish history and politics."―Lucy Scholes, Daily Beast"Story after marvelous story...."―Catherine Holmes, Post and Courier"Fire-warmed Chekhovian realist fictions (though they are slyly experimental), which run the gamut from stories of class and romance to cautionary tales of sex and madness."―Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire"Honest, daring, thoughtful, eloquent, restless.... The Love Object was bound to be brilliant-these stories are for the most part known and loved. But reading them all together engages us in a lengthy, thoughtful dialogue between a brilliant mind and an interesting world. Not to be missed."―Jane Smiley, Philadelphia Inquirer"So good!"―Carolina Herrera, Wall Street Journal
About the Author Edna O'Brien is the author of The Country Girls Trilogy, The Light of Evening, Saints and Sinners, Country Girl, and other widely acclaimed books. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, she has lived in London for many years.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Edna O’Brien has chosen pieces with a rich Irish spirit of confounding, enduring charm By Bookreporter In THE LOVE OBJECT, a collection of 31 stories from 1968 to 2011, Edna O’Brien has chosen pieces with a rich Irish spirit of confounding, enduring charm. No two tales are similar; it is a mistake to believe you can predict any outcome.Time is fluid. Narrators rely on memory to explain rash behavior, confirm a past love affair, or challenge the universe. The present is informed by the past, even though there is seldom a linear time frame. “I walk in memory, morning noon and night,” thinks the woman who has come back to her hometown from the city to bury her aunt in “The Doll.” After a perfunctory visit to the son of her late teacher, she leaves his home. And while remembering a painful experience from her childhood, she begins to walk. And she walks. She believes in the wondrous nature of stars and that one day she would rise to reach them and be absorbed in their glory, passing from a selfish world of cruelty and stupidity. Only a few pages long, “The Doll” moves forward and backward in the narrator’s life, allowing us glimpses of who she is and how she was affected by a long-ago selfish action.Not much escapes the narrator, whether she is the object of love, a dispassionate observer, or a critical bystander. Narrators may be named or anonymous, but the stories turn on their awareness and interpretation of events. In “A Scandalous Woman,” the narrator questions how the shame of scandal ever came into being, and wonders how the land in which she and the scandalous woman live is a murderous land, a strange sacrificial place. The narrator is the friend of the most beautiful girl in the village; she describes Eily as her connection to the times. Eily was stunning: her eyes were as big and soft and transparent as ripe gooseberries. Eily was headstrong: she would work hard to get to the main road in the evenings to watch the passersby.Sometimes, the narrator of “A Scandalous Woman” says that “one finds herself in the swim of things; one is wanted, one is privy, then it happens, the destiny, and it is over and one sits back and knows it is someone else’s turn.” She helps Eily deceive the adults after a young Protestant bank clerk becomes interested in the Catholic girl, and she is the guard standing by as the two become lovers. After the young man is forced to marry the pregnant Eily in ugly circumstances, they move to another small town and the narrator hears of her deterioration and madness through the occasional letters that Eily writes home. Unfairness and shame mark each page, and, even though the narrator’s own life hinged on the events of these young days, she does not understand why women are sacrificed.In another story, “Lantern Slides,” set on the outskirts of Dublin, Miss Lawless and Mr. Conroy attend a birthday party for Betty, whose errant husband has not come home for the surprise gala. The probability of his arrival and the likelihood of his being with Clara, his Danish paramour, are contrapuntal in the music of conversation and food. Each guest at the table becomes a rival, the brunt of speculation or an unexpected confidant, as Miss Lawless discovers the layers of intrigue and passion within the small group. She has the interesting fortune to attract the attention of the newly widowed Abelard, and the last moments of the story see her wondering who will see her home that evening. The details of the company’s posh styles and affluent backgrounds display to the reader a variation in O’Brien’s writing, although the quiet voice of speculation and understanding remains the same.Another of O’Brien’s gifts is the affirmation of hope. Hope is present in one form or another in all of the stories; it may disappear, but it will surface again --- in another time, with another woman’s understanding of its importance.The only way to read an Edna O’Brien story is from the beginning. Yes, that should be standard advice, but it borders on imperative with O’Brien. Do not think you can catch up with the narrative somewhere in the middle; you will regret not knowing the complete background. So savor each sentence as each character appears and delight in the pictures of the life she draws for us. And do not skip to the end; you will need each piece of the story to identify and enjoy fully the beauty of longing and understanding that O’Brien brings to life.Reviewed by Jane Krebs
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. The Love Object: A Reflection of Desire, Disappointment and Drama... By missmickee/bookreview "The Love Object: Selected Stories" (2012) authored by award winning author Edna O'Brien covers the directness and emotional depth related to marriage, extra marital affairs, estrangement and abandonment. Nearly all the complexities in the lives of young to middle aged Irish women are revealed in this masterfully written short story collection.Martha, 30 years old is the same age as her lovers wife: in "The Love Object". As the affair continued, Martha felt no pity for his wife and seethed with resentment; could she be as deeply in love as she thought? The lovemaking was perfect, yet she felt degraded when he proclaimed: "You still have a great physical hold over me."In: " An Outing" Mrs. Farley is a perfectionist, waking up to a 6:00 am alarm each day, married to a pudgy boring husband she no longer loves. Much of her time is making plans to meet with her married lover, as she looks for happiness outside her marriage."The Rug": when a poor Irish family receives an area carpet in the mail after having linoleum installed, they marvel at who could have sent them such a grand gift, the truth behind the carpet's arrival never occurs to the family.Mary, a youngish hardworking Irish farm girl is seemingly invited to a party at a hotel in the nearby town in "Irish Revel" although the invitation was misleading, and she had every right to decline, she accepted the invitation and learned a great deal in the process.A mother flew to London to visit her daughter, the author of stories and poems that didn't make "sense" to the mother, feeling she also "mixed with queer people" in "Cords". The daughter made every effort to be respectful of her judgmental mother, taking her shopping and enjoying sights, it would seem that the mother would be nicer, more appreciative with the enormous effort to improve the mother-daughter relationship. The reader senses the heavy weight of disappointment and misunderstanding.My favorite story was the last one "Paradise": an unnamed younger woman joined her 60 something very wealthy and famous lover at his waterfront mansion. Attended by servants, dining on the best of cuisine, she was also subjected to judgment related to her lovers multiple former wives and children. Feeling inadequate, because she couldn't swim, a special British swim instructor was hired to work with her. This still didn't help, very fearful of the water, an incident happened that alters the relationship with her lover.Edna O'Brien is recognized for writing about feminist Irish life and culture, a notable bestselling prolific author and playwright, her "Country Girl: A Memoir" (2013) was released, also a trilogy featuring the same title. O'Brien has authored a biography of James Joyce, and "Byron In Love: A Short Daring Life" (2010) also other novels, plays, and short story collections. She lives in London. ~ With thanks to the Seattle Public Library.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Painting the Inside: Love's Reality By W Perry Hall You should read the trailblazing Irish writer Edna O'Brien, if you haven't. She was a pioneer in writing the uncensored, ungilded lives and inner thoughts of women, and, as such, a revolutionary in her native Ireland.Educated as a pharmacist, she married a writer and moved to London. It was then, ironically, that she read James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," and decided she wanted to write. She came out of the gate, but good, at the age of 30 with the 1960 publication of "The Country Girls," the first of what's now known as The Country Girls Trilogy (1960-64). These books were banned, and even burned, in Ireland due to their vivid depiction of the sensual lives and thoughts of women (especially single ones).Most of the tales in this volume of selected stories portray the inner thoughts and sensuousness of women, their strengths and flaws, primarily in relationships with men but also to other women. I found the title story the most notable in this respect, particularly considering when it was published (1968), in its vivid framing of the deliberations, imaginations and progressive deterioration of a woman infatuated, erotically hungry for, and ultimately obsessed with a married man.Other stories show the savagery of some women, particularly in leading a collective (including gossipy men). In THE WIDOW, a young single lady named Bridget moves into town and rents out rooms in her home to pay the bills; the women (and men) refer to her at times by quoting a rhyming song that goes, "Betty the whore who lives in a house without a door." Bridget marries, and some years later, her husband drowns while out fishing. After a new man comes a-calling on Bridget, they fall in love and quickly get engaged, the townsfolk start rumors that her first husband committed suicide causing the fiance' to call it all off. Woe, insidious depredation by defamation.As Hypocrites said, the "inside" is "where a person loves from," it's "the reality, not what they say." Edna O'Brien seems to capture where the woman loves from better than any writer this male has read.
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