"Country Girl is Edna O'Brien's exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life."--National Public Radio When Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest. O'Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. Country Girl brings us face-to-face with a life of high drama and contemplation. Starting with O'Brien's birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the '60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as a celebrated writer and the guest of Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton. Country Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime.

A treasure of world literature back in print, featuring a new introduction by Eimear McBride This omnibus edition includes the novels The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, and Girls in Their Married Bliss. The country girls are Caithleen “Kate” Brady and Bridget “Baba” Brennan, and their story begins in the repressive atmosphere of a small village in the west of Ireland in the years following World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a survivor. Setting out to conquer the bright lights of Dublin, they are rewarded with comical miscommunications, furtive liaisons, bad faith, bad luck, bad sex, and compromise; marrying for the wrong reasons, betraying for the wrong reasons, fighting in their separate ways against the overwhelming wave of expectations forced upon "girls" of every era. The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue charts unflinchingly the pattern of women’s lives, from the high spirits of youth to the chill of middle age, from hope to despair, in remarkable prose swinging from blunt and brutal to whimsical and lyrical. It is a saga both painful and hilarious, and remains one of the major accomplishments of Edna O’Brien’s extraordinary career.

Up-Country Girl is the story of an African girl from a rural farming community, and the notable achievements and developments in her life, which coincided with many national events. Nigeria moved from being a British colony to independence, and the new democracy was disrupted by a series of coups detat bringing decades of military rule, before a return to civilian rule in 1999. Interwoven into her story are the authors personal views from experience, on old and new polygamy, corruption, sex education, the upbringing of children, business partnerships, the problems of a pluralistic society, work ethics, and other issues. Up-Country Girl also affords the reader a truthful and accurate portrayal of African culture. As a creative writer, the author wrote Nothing So Sweet which won First Prize in a British Council competition; several short stories which were broadcast by the B.B.C; Folktales and Fables published by Penguin Books, and short stories included in two recent anthologies. As an educationist, she is best known as the co-author of secondary school textbooks: New Practical English by Ogundipe and Tregidgo, and Brighter Grammar. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

THE STORY: The title character is Georgie Elgin, a faithful, forgiving woman, whose long years of devotion to her actor husband, Frank, have almost obliterated her own personality. The life of an actor's wife is not as glamorous as many imagine. So

The New York Times bestselling tale of heartbreak and hope from the author of An Irish Country Doctor