The Lonely Girl

A looooong time ago in the decade old life of Arukiyomi, I read August is a Wicked Month. That was my first taste of O’Brien’s work and it’s been too long since I’ve been back. Her writing is always heavy with meaning and carefully crafted.

Although this didn’t live up to August, I did enjoy it. It’s a tale of young love set in O’Brien’s native Ireland. What action there is takes place in Dublin or the countryside nearby.

But this is not a novel about action. It’s a novel about a clash of cultures. O’Brien skilfully uses the medium of a woman in her early twenties falling in love with a much older (and essentially a much more married man) to portray the gap between contemporary Irish culture and the show more traditional.

Traditional Irish culture gets treated mercilessly. We have the
religious bigots and hypocrites, the decaying Irish village, the village weirdos, the controlling family, the damp housing … even the weather and landscape away from Dublin fail to find sympathy with O’Brien.

Against this backdrop, you have the young country girl struggling to find her new identity on various levels as both Dublin and her new lover inspire her to conquer her fears and forge her path.

The only judgment here comes from those too prejudiced to have an objective viewpoint. I’m tempted to include O’Brien herself in that. Not only, as I’ve said, does she not have a good word to say about the traditionalists, but she fails to provide any tangible exploration of the failings of the new culture that is emerging.

In this she disappointed me. No culture is perfect. Present-day cultures which condone the so-called freedoms of adultery, infidelity and the myth of premarital sex apparently without consequences will be condemned, as every other culture has been, by history itself. This makes the novel important for capturing the essence of its time, but its weakness for me was that it did not transcend this. show less

Also known as "The Girl with Green Eyes", this is the second of The Country Girls trilogy.
Young Kate and her best friend Baba have fled the Irish countryside and moved to Dublin to find adventure and men. Awkward, easily led Kate has once again found an inappropriate love interest: older, married Eugene, whom she pursues until he decides he likes her. Word of her romance gets back to her father, who arrives in Dublin, kidnaps her off the street and keeps her at home with the help of half the village. Her father's behavior only makes Kate more determined that Eugene is right for her.
It's hard not to like Kate, even as she hounds Eugene, behaves childishly and allows her friend Baba to treat her horribly. This book of the trilogy was show more made into a good movie. This particular cover has nothing at all to do with the story.4 stars show less

There are a lot of reasons to read this after reading ´The Country Girls´ first. Essentially both books form a continuous story. O´Brien - with a nod at least to some personal experience - follows her country girls into the big city. Dublin is racy compared with their Irish village, but actually a rather prim and upright place in the 1950´s. It is definitely an in-between sort of novel, picking up threads from the first, and then leaving the resolution to the next in the series, but it (seems to me) to work well enough in its own right. The descriptive talent is there, the wonderful dialog and characters. There is a lot about (mostly unrequited) romance and the rather harsh way young women and older men treat and deceive each other, show more but it all rings true, and is important in the developing sensibility of the author and the story line. From the Irish point of view it was a devastating attack on ´society´, but you´d need to appreciate how repressed it was to understand how radical O´Brien´s writing was. Perhaps spending some time in Dublin some years ago makes it make more sense for me. More story than novel, but only a shade less entertaining and engaging than her first book. show less

I actually enjoyed this book more than the first in the trilogy.

However, Caithleen has not changed much. She is older, but she is still not able to make her own decisions. As may be typical of a girl whose mother died when she was young and who grew up with an alcoholic father and a domineering best friend (Baba), Caithleen just wants to please. This makes her rather wishy washy, as she holds the opinion of the person with her a the time.

This is also a very trait to have as a young woman in 1960s Ireland who has left home for the city. With no supervision, a friend who just wants to have fun, and a job, Caithleen cannot be trusted to do what is best for herself or for herself. She has no real opinions of her own to trust, as she can't show more read people at all.

Must read book 3. show less

What a nice book. To be honest, I hadn't expected that. Usually I get irritaded by stories about young girls who are foolishly in love with the wrong man.
This book was about that, but it had so much more to it, description of the way things were in Ireland during the 1960's, the narrowmindedness, the strictness.

I might even try to get my hands on the other two books in the trilogy.

Country bumpkin falls in love with older, more sophisticated man. A quick read; funny at times and insightful at others.

Reading this as part of the Dublin: One City, One Book initiative. Enjoyed the second novel more than the first. Looking forward to reading the last book to see what happens Kate.