The Love Object by Edna O'brien
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
Edna O'Brien is the author of numerous books, including The Country Girls Trilogy, The Light of the Evening, Byron in Love, and House of Splendid Isolation. She is the recipient of the James Joyce Ulysses Medal. She lives in London, England.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780224613576 |
| ISBN 10 | 022461357X |
| Title | The Love Object |
| Author | Edna O'brien |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 1968-07-01 |
| Number of pages | 192 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |