The 31 stories in The Love Object represent a half-century of Edna O'Brien's literary short fiction, collected in one volume for the first time.
O'Brien gained instant notoriety with her 1960 debut novel, The Country Girls, which was banned in her native Ireland for its frank portrayal of women's sexual desire. Her work since then has been characterized by effortlessly beautiful language and profound sympathy for the irresistible nature of female longing and its often terrible consequences. This collection showcases that achievement in her short fiction.
In "The Connor Girls," a woman visits her dying father and, drawn back into old conflicts, concludes, "by such choices we gradually become exiles, until at last we are quite alone." In "Paradise," a woman vacationing with her wealthy lover and his friends battles anxiety about their class differences and her ability to hold his fickle interest. In "Old Wounds," a family rift cannot quite be healed when a burial plot divides loyalties between two cousins.
These stories mesmerize with their measured cadences and compassion for their characters. Each narrator, whether she is a young girl or an aging woman, nun or expatriate, searches for something beyond love and hate, "something for which there is no name, because to name it would be to deprive it of its truth." Cumulatively, these stories prove O'Brien to be an enormously gifted writer whose characters reveal the contradictory and ineffable power of longing and the cruelties inherent in its pursuit. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer