After I read "The Little Red Chairs", my first attempt at an Edna O'Brien novel, I added this comment:
"My first Edna O'Brien and if this is the best she can do, it will be my last. OK, it was a very powerful novel, shocking even. Something to endure rather than enjoy. It should really come with a warning."The same could be said of our latest choice for book club. Knowing the subject matter, I started to read with some trepidation, especially as this was too close to reality for comfort. It should have been advertised as dramatised non-fiction. My first impressions were "let's write a story about the most awful events imaginable". There is no lead-in to the horrors of the book, just straight in with a bang.
The fact that it is written in the first person by "Girl" makes it even more disturbing. The first part is remorseless in it's violence. The rest is the aftermath and the traumatic effects it has on Maryam. I'm not sure about much of the prose, is it lazy or trying to mimic our narrator? I also become tired of the various diversions, stories and anecdotes from characters who had nothing to do with the main narrative.
But I guess this is an important story to tell, albeit in a fictionalised format. Edna O'Brien has been brave to tell it, it does have heart. In a way, the men are worse off than the women, they face horrible injury and death. We are back to the Middle Ages. Thank goodness I had something light on my bookshelf to start next, hurrah for Deborah Moggach and Buffy's Ex-Wives.
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