A review by dar_muzz
The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien

5.0

I am giving this book 6 stars. A truer coming-of-age tale has never been writ. Oh, the curse of being an observant and perceptive child! - having such an awareness of the foibles of the adults entrusted with looking after you. Knowing your best friend is cruel and manipulative but keeping her anyway because you get something out of the friendship too. Wanting to be a good girl and a bad girl at the same time. Noting the disappearance of your own innocence. Pressing forward with your life but occasionally being knocked for a loop by vivid memories. Wanting to be in two places at the same time. There was hardly a page I didn't think, "Yes, that's exactly how it is!" (This would also have been influenced by my strict Catholic upbringing).

I saw a new line of reprinted paperbacks of Edna O'Brien's books when I was in the UK in April. I hadn't encountered the author before yet I wanted to buy them all! I resisted and went back home, vowing to read them from my own public library. Now I am thrilled to be able to move on to the two sequels and the rest of Ms. O'Brien's oeuvre.