Girl (O'Brien novel)

Last updated

Girl
Girl (O'Brien novel).jpg
First edition
Author Edna O'Brien
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Faber & Faber
Publication date
September 5, 2019
Media typePrint (Hardback)
Pages240
ISBN 9-780-57134116-0

Girl is a 2019 novel by Irish author Edna O'Brien. The book's plot is inspired by the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping, and is narrated by a fictional victim, Maryam. [1]

Contents

History and composition

O'Brien first conceived of the novel after reading about a girl kidnapped by Boko Haram in a magazine at a doctor's office. [2] O'Brien does not type her books, and as with others wrote Girl on loose paper, periodically dictating pages to a typist. [3]

Reception

Writing for The Guardian , Alex Clark praised the novel, saying: "Everything that O’Brien does memorably throughout her novels, she does here." [4]

According to literary review aggregator Book Marks, the novel received mostly positive reviews. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zadie Smith</span> British novelist, essayist, and short-story writer (born 1975)

Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.

<i>Hairspray</i> (musical) American musical

Hairspray is an American musical with music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, with a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, based on John Waters's 1988 film of the same name. The songs include 1960s-style dance music and "downtown" rhythm and blues. Set in 1962 Baltimore, Maryland, the production follows teenage Tracy Turnblad's dream to dance on The Corny Collins Show, a local TV dance program based on the real-life Buddy Deane Show. When Tracy wins a role on the show, she becomes a celebrity overnight, leading to social change as Tracy campaigns for the show's integration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edna O'Brien</span> Irish writer

Josephine Edna O'Brien is an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short-story writer. Elected to Aosdána by her fellow artists, she was honoured with the title Saoi in 2015 and the biennial "UK and Ireland Nobel" David Cohen Prize in 2019, whilst France made her Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Banville</span> Irish writer, also writes as Benjamin Black (born 1945)

William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Patterson</span> American author (born 1947)

James Brendan Patterson is an American author. Among his works are the Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, NYPD Red, Witch & Wizard, Private and Middle School series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction, and romance novels. His books have sold more than 425 million copies, and he was the first person to sell 1 million e-books. In 2016, Patterson topped Forbes's list of highest-paid authors for the third consecutive year, with an income of $95 million. His total income over a decade is estimated at $700 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Donoghue</span> Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller. Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction. She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audrey Niffenegger</span> American writer, artist and academic (born 1963)

Audrey Niffenegger is an American writer, artist and academic. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003, was a bestseller.

<i>The Country Girls</i> Trilogy of novels by Irish author Edna OBrien

The Country Girls is a trilogy by Irish author Edna O'Brien. It consists of three novels: The Country Girls (1960), The Lonely Girl (1962), and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964). The trilogy was re-released in 1986 in a single volume with a revised ending to Girls in Their Married Bliss and addition of an epilogue. The Country Girls, both the trilogy and the novel, is often credited with breaking silence on sexual matters and social issues during a repressive period in Ireland following World War II and was adapted into a 1983 film. All three novels were banned by the Irish censorship board and faced significant public disdain in Ireland. O'Brien won the Kingsley Amis Award in 1962 for The Country Girls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hilary Mantel</span> British writer (1952–2022)

Dame Hilary Mary Mantel was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, Every Day Is Mother's Day, was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a personal memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Enright</span> Irish writer (born 1962)

Anne Teresa Enright is an Irish writer. The first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015–2018) and winner of the Man Booker Prize (2007), she has published seven novels, many short stories, and a non-fiction work called Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, about the birth of her two children. Her essays on literary themes have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of The Irish Times and The Guardian. Her fiction explores themes such as family, love, identity and motherhood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessie Burton</span> British author and actress

Jessica Kathryn Burton is an English author; As of 2022, she has published four novels, The Miniaturist, The Muse, The Confession, The House of Fortune and two books for children, The Restless Girls and Medusa. All four adult novels were Sunday Times best-sellers, with The Miniaturist, The Muse and The House of Fortune reaching no. 1, and both The Miniaturist and The Muse were New York Times best-sellers, and Radio 4's Books at Bedtime. Collectively her novels have been published in almost 40 languages. Her short stories have been published in Harpers Bazaar US and Stylist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernardine Evaristo</span> British author and academic (born 1959)

Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aminatta Forna</span> Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer

Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (2002), and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maaza Mengiste</span> Ethiopian-American writer (born 1974)

Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-American writer. Her novels include Beneath the Lion's Gaze (2010) and The Shadow King (2019), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.

<i>Country Girl</i> (memoir) Book by Edna OBrien

Country Girl is the memoir of Edna O'Brien. Faber and Faber published it in 2012. The title refers to her debut novel The Country Girls, which was banned, burned and denounced upon publication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eimear McBride</span> Irish novelist

Eimear McBride is an Irish novelist, whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roxane Gay</span> American writer (born 1974)

Roxane Gay is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017).

<i>The Light of Evening</i>

The Light of the Evening is a 2006 novel by Irish novelist Edna O'Brien. The novel explores the relationship between one of O'Brien's archetypal defeated rural women, who on her deathbed is trying repair her relationship with her daughter, a writer.

<i>The Little Red Chairs</i> Novel by Edna OBrien

The Little Red Chairs is a 2015 novel by Irish author Edna O'Brien, who was 85 at the time of publication. The novel is O'Brien's 23rd fictional publication.

<i>Girl, Woman, Other</i> 2018 novel by Bernardine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other is the eighth novel by Bernardine Evaristo. Published in 2019 by Hamish Hamilton, it follows the lives of 12 characters in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. The book was the co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments.

References

  1. Rafferty, Terrence (September 2019). "Edna O'Brien's Lonely Girls". The Atlantic. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
  2. Kelly, Mary Louise (11 October 2019). "Edna O'Brien On 6 Decades Of Writing 'Very Difficult Stories' About Women". NPR. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  3. Parker, Ian (7 October 2019). "Edna O'Brien Is Still Writing About Women on the Run". The New Yorker. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
  4. Clark, Alex (6 September 2019). "Girl by Edna O'Brien review – a masterclass of storytelling". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
  5. "Girl". Book Marks. Retrieved 28 August 2020.