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The Love Object

The Love Object

Selected Stories

by Edna O'Brien
Hardback
Publication Date: 05/05/2015

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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

ISBN:
9780316378260
9780316378260
Category:
Classic fiction
Format:
Hardback
Publication Date:
05-05-2015
Language:
English
Publisher:
Little, Brown & Company
Country of origin:
United States
Dimensions (mm):
241.3x165.1x44.45mm
Weight:
0.8kg
Edna O'Brien

Since her debut novel The Country Girls Edna O'Brien has written over twenty works of fiction along with a biography of James Joyce and Lord Byron.

She is the recipient of many awards including the Irish Pen Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Art's Gold Medal and the Ulysses Medal.

Born and raised in the west of Ireland she has lived in London for many years.

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