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Lantern Slides: Short Stories
A new collection of short stories.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
17 people are currently reading
321 people want to read
About the author
Edna O'Brien
112 books1,376 followersEdna O’Brien was an award-winning Irish author of novels, plays, and short stories. She has been hailed as one of the greatest chroniclers of the female experience in the twentieth century. She was the 2011 recipient of the Frank O’Connor Prize, awarded for her short story collection Saints and Sinners. She also received, among other honors, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin, and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Literary Academy. Her 1960 debut novel, The Country Girls, was banned in her native Ireland for its groundbreaking depictions of female sexuality. Notable works also include August Is a Wicked Month (1965), A Pagan Place (1970), Lantern Slides (1990), and The Light of Evening (2006). O’Brien lived in London until her death.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
July 3, 2021
Wow.
I just finished this collection…actually just finished the last story in the collection, the eponymous (I love that word….I never knew what it meant…now I know and use it whenever I can!) ‘Lantern Slides’. I loved it…was blown away by it and was scrounging around Google trying to determine if it was published first in a literary periodical and came upon a journal article in Studies in Short Fiction (Volume 32: pages 437-446, 1995) titled ‘Edna O’Brien’s “Lantern Slides” and Joyce’s “The Dead”: Shadows of a Bygone Era’ (author: Sandra Manoogian Pearce). In it she compares and contrasts Lantern Slides to “The Dead”. Less than a year ago I read ‘The Dead’ in Joyce’s collection, Dubliners, and was enthralled by the beauty of it. I gave it 5 stars and was ranting and raving in my review about how good it was — no wonder then given that ‘Lantern Slides’ was connected to Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ that I loved this story too. And overall a very good short story collection.
I read this collection because a while back I read “Paradise” by Edna O’Brien and liked it a lot, and then last week another GR friend read it and there were a lot of comments on her review and my GR friend asked me what else I would recommend of O’Brien and I had to admit I had not read any of her other stories (I was well aware of her as an author) and so I found myself in the library shortly thereafter and lugged home this book along with two other collections of her works (A Fanatic Heart; The Love Object: Selected Stories). I devoured this in one night and the next morning. 😊
Early on when reading the stories I appreciated the writing and how good it was, but I could not discern the point of the stories and was a bit disappointed but soldiered on, and then the stories got way better (in my opinion). Here they are in order of appearance and my ratings and comments now and then:
1. “Oft in the Stilly Night” – 3 stars
• Good writing but I think I missed the point if there was one.
2. Brother – 2.5 stars
• A brother wants to get married and his sister (who I guess he’s had sex with) vows to kill the wife-to-be before the year is out. Having a hard time understanding the stories.
3. The Widow – 3.5 stars (published originally in The New Yorker, January 23, 1989)
• People in town were mean to Bridget. She is engaged to be married to the creamery manager (who jilted his girlfriend). People spread a rumor that her husband didn’t drown but committed suicide because she drove him to it. She ends up wrapping her car around a tree. The writing is good, but I’m not touched by any of the stories yet.
4. Epitaph – 2.5 stars
5. What a Sky – 4.5 stars (published originally in The New Yorker, July 10, 1989)
• So so sad. A daughter who is perhaps an old maid visits her grumpy father in a nursing home. He’s not a very nice man. She was going to take him out to lunch at a fancy hotel but can’t bring herself to do it.
6. Storm – 5 stars
• A mother has words with her son and daughter-in-law and she regrets it (they get mad at her) and next day the son and daughter-in-law go out sailing and she’s afraid they died in a storm…very good writing and this story I did understand. They make peace with one another at end of story.
7. Another Time – 3.5 stars
• A woman (Nellie) meets a woman she knew many years ago. She was a girlfriend or fiancé of a man (teacher) that Nellie had a crush on and probably would have slept with him if given the chance. Rest of story is about other people in the hotel she is staying at…sort of a weird story but good writing and not boring.
8. A Demon – 4.5 stars
• A family goes to a convent to take their daughter home who is sick with a cough or perhaps tuberculosis (or so the nuns say). She is pregnant, it appears. A very good story.
9. Dramas – 3.5 stars (published originally in the Paris Review, Issue 110 Spring 1989)
• Funny in a sad sort of way. Men who are newcomers to a town dress up as women in preparation for a play. The townspeople are horrified.
10. Long Distance – 3 stars
11. A Little Holiday – 3 stars (published originally in The New Yorker, February 27, 1987)
12. Lantern Slides – 5 stars
• Mostly sad stories about affairs and romantic love (that didn’t last). A bunch of people with their own stories to tell at a lavish birthday party at a hotel for a woman whose husband has left her. We as readers get to hear all of the stories and not a one is boring. Wonderful writing.
Reviews:
• https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/30/bo...
• https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
I just finished this collection…actually just finished the last story in the collection, the eponymous (I love that word….I never knew what it meant…now I know and use it whenever I can!) ‘Lantern Slides’. I loved it…was blown away by it and was scrounging around Google trying to determine if it was published first in a literary periodical and came upon a journal article in Studies in Short Fiction (Volume 32: pages 437-446, 1995) titled ‘Edna O’Brien’s “Lantern Slides” and Joyce’s “The Dead”: Shadows of a Bygone Era’ (author: Sandra Manoogian Pearce). In it she compares and contrasts Lantern Slides to “The Dead”. Less than a year ago I read ‘The Dead’ in Joyce’s collection, Dubliners, and was enthralled by the beauty of it. I gave it 5 stars and was ranting and raving in my review about how good it was — no wonder then given that ‘Lantern Slides’ was connected to Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ that I loved this story too. And overall a very good short story collection.
I read this collection because a while back I read “Paradise” by Edna O’Brien and liked it a lot, and then last week another GR friend read it and there were a lot of comments on her review and my GR friend asked me what else I would recommend of O’Brien and I had to admit I had not read any of her other stories (I was well aware of her as an author) and so I found myself in the library shortly thereafter and lugged home this book along with two other collections of her works (A Fanatic Heart; The Love Object: Selected Stories). I devoured this in one night and the next morning. 😊
Early on when reading the stories I appreciated the writing and how good it was, but I could not discern the point of the stories and was a bit disappointed but soldiered on, and then the stories got way better (in my opinion). Here they are in order of appearance and my ratings and comments now and then:
1. “Oft in the Stilly Night” – 3 stars
• Good writing but I think I missed the point if there was one.
2. Brother – 2.5 stars
• A brother wants to get married and his sister (who I guess he’s had sex with) vows to kill the wife-to-be before the year is out. Having a hard time understanding the stories.
3. The Widow – 3.5 stars (published originally in The New Yorker, January 23, 1989)
• People in town were mean to Bridget. She is engaged to be married to the creamery manager (who jilted his girlfriend). People spread a rumor that her husband didn’t drown but committed suicide because she drove him to it. She ends up wrapping her car around a tree. The writing is good, but I’m not touched by any of the stories yet.
4. Epitaph – 2.5 stars
5. What a Sky – 4.5 stars (published originally in The New Yorker, July 10, 1989)
• So so sad. A daughter who is perhaps an old maid visits her grumpy father in a nursing home. He’s not a very nice man. She was going to take him out to lunch at a fancy hotel but can’t bring herself to do it.
6. Storm – 5 stars
• A mother has words with her son and daughter-in-law and she regrets it (they get mad at her) and next day the son and daughter-in-law go out sailing and she’s afraid they died in a storm…very good writing and this story I did understand. They make peace with one another at end of story.
7. Another Time – 3.5 stars
• A woman (Nellie) meets a woman she knew many years ago. She was a girlfriend or fiancé of a man (teacher) that Nellie had a crush on and probably would have slept with him if given the chance. Rest of story is about other people in the hotel she is staying at…sort of a weird story but good writing and not boring.
8. A Demon – 4.5 stars
• A family goes to a convent to take their daughter home who is sick with a cough or perhaps tuberculosis (or so the nuns say). She is pregnant, it appears. A very good story.
9. Dramas – 3.5 stars (published originally in the Paris Review, Issue 110 Spring 1989)
• Funny in a sad sort of way. Men who are newcomers to a town dress up as women in preparation for a play. The townspeople are horrified.
10. Long Distance – 3 stars
11. A Little Holiday – 3 stars (published originally in The New Yorker, February 27, 1987)
12. Lantern Slides – 5 stars
• Mostly sad stories about affairs and romantic love (that didn’t last). A bunch of people with their own stories to tell at a lavish birthday party at a hotel for a woman whose husband has left her. We as readers get to hear all of the stories and not a one is boring. Wonderful writing.
Reviews:
• https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/30/bo...
• https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
February 12, 2009
While I appreciate O'Brien's gift of language, I almost think I would have enjoyed these stories better if I'd heard her read them in her rich Irish voice. The themes are mostly trite and not anything I can really relate to. I do appreciate the fact that she can take rather ordinary material and enrich it however.
September 15, 2015
At first I thought “lantern slides” were a different way of talking about the contemporary (yet obsolete) film slide, but no, they hark back to hundreds of years ago when photographic or other images were applied to a glass slide that then was placed in a “magic lantern,” to project images, say, on a white wall—a precursor to the motion picture. [I hate to defer to Wikipedia, but sometimes there seems to be no other source.] Edna O’Brien’s stories, each one in this collection, might just serve as one of these lantern slides, many times seeming “distant,” yet always making readers feel that they, too, might be present in such a yarn. At any rate, I once again find myself enchanted by Ms. O’Brien’s stories, even if I’m twenty-five years late in reading this volume. She has such a way with developing character, point of view, and other elements that allow her to engage readers quickly and not let them go until she’s finished. For example, in some stories she may employ the second person to draw readers in as intimates, as she does in “The Widow”:
O’Brien possesses an impeccable vocabulary, challenging readers of the English language to season their reading in the same manner a chef might challenge diners with a rare but effective spice, for example “viaticum” meaning “prayer,” something an Irish Catholic would know but might be a bit arcane for an American Protestant.
And yet the meaning of some words may make themselves apparent by way of context of this opening sentence: “Bridget was her name. She played cards like a trooper, and her tipple was gin-and-lime” (35). Or this: “she kept toiling and moiling” (64), the latter meaning about the same as the former, a common phrase in the Emerald Isle.
Anyone who enjoys the short story as a form analogous to the poem will love these twelve stories by O’Brien, most of them having appeared either in The New Yorker or The Paris Review. I bought this copy in 2013 for $2.50 from a used bookstore. Though its price has diminished, its value has not.
“You may ask, as the postmistress had asked—the postmistress her sworn enemy—‘Why have venetian blinds drawn at all times, winter and summer, daylight and dark? What is Bridget trying to hide?’” (36). Indeed you want to find out.
O’Brien possesses an impeccable vocabulary, challenging readers of the English language to season their reading in the same manner a chef might challenge diners with a rare but effective spice, for example “viaticum” meaning “prayer,” something an Irish Catholic would know but might be a bit arcane for an American Protestant.
And yet the meaning of some words may make themselves apparent by way of context of this opening sentence: “Bridget was her name. She played cards like a trooper, and her tipple was gin-and-lime” (35). Or this: “she kept toiling and moiling” (64), the latter meaning about the same as the former, a common phrase in the Emerald Isle.
Anyone who enjoys the short story as a form analogous to the poem will love these twelve stories by O’Brien, most of them having appeared either in The New Yorker or The Paris Review. I bought this copy in 2013 for $2.50 from a used bookstore. Though its price has diminished, its value has not.
May 11, 2024
3.5
Most stories were a 3 and a few were a 4 so this was both a ‘liked’ and ‘liked a lot’ experience.
•
O’Brien’s sensibility is very specific, and her worlds have an old-fashioned concreteness and intensity. Women are often ruled by their passions, which feel so big in the small communities in which they reside and eke out an existence. They’re surrounded by country, by fields and flowers and trees and animals, and conservative gossipy people. They’re consumed by desire, loneliness, love, longing, anger, a feeling of being overlooked, and are sometimes trying to take their destinies in their own hands, in their own small ways. The men are often cruel. Men are the rulers. O’Brien’s embattled characters often put on brave faces and bear their hardships and claustrophobia quietly and alone. Or they go a little wild.
All of these stories are contained, individual works, but more or less inhabit the same world. Because of the enclosed settings and small populace, there’s the sense that characters in one story could be passing through somewhere in the background in others. I liked the way this familiarity played against the distinctness of each story, the variety of the circumstances of the different characters.
O’Brien’s writing is effortlessly fluent, her prose stylish and supple, the tone dark but casual. The voice is always super Irish. These are deliciously dreary and blackly comic stories.
Most stories were a 3 and a few were a 4 so this was both a ‘liked’ and ‘liked a lot’ experience.
•
O’Brien’s sensibility is very specific, and her worlds have an old-fashioned concreteness and intensity. Women are often ruled by their passions, which feel so big in the small communities in which they reside and eke out an existence. They’re surrounded by country, by fields and flowers and trees and animals, and conservative gossipy people. They’re consumed by desire, loneliness, love, longing, anger, a feeling of being overlooked, and are sometimes trying to take their destinies in their own hands, in their own small ways. The men are often cruel. Men are the rulers. O’Brien’s embattled characters often put on brave faces and bear their hardships and claustrophobia quietly and alone. Or they go a little wild.
All of these stories are contained, individual works, but more or less inhabit the same world. Because of the enclosed settings and small populace, there’s the sense that characters in one story could be passing through somewhere in the background in others. I liked the way this familiarity played against the distinctness of each story, the variety of the circumstances of the different characters.
O’Brien’s writing is effortlessly fluent, her prose stylish and supple, the tone dark but casual. The voice is always super Irish. These are deliciously dreary and blackly comic stories.
May 15, 2008
Wow. Not very like any short stories I have read before.
Negative - They didn't "pop".
Positive - They make you think. You finish them and you wonder what you supposed to get out of that. If you pause for a little bit and consider, they really give you a lot to think about.
Negative - They are mostly depressing. I hear that this is par for the course, though, for Irish authors, a group I have little personal experience with.
I liked them all better upon a second reading.
What did I learn? A lot about Edna O'Brien's point of view.
Worst stories - Brother, Another Time, Dramas.
Sure, I know bad stuff happens - people get stuck in incest, people are violent towards minority groups such as gays, etc, but do I want to read about it? Does it help me to combat it in any way?
Best stories - Epitaph, Long Distance.
Negative - They didn't "pop".
Positive - They make you think. You finish them and you wonder what you supposed to get out of that. If you pause for a little bit and consider, they really give you a lot to think about.
Negative - They are mostly depressing. I hear that this is par for the course, though, for Irish authors, a group I have little personal experience with.
I liked them all better upon a second reading.
What did I learn? A lot about Edna O'Brien's point of view.
Worst stories - Brother, Another Time, Dramas.
Sure, I know bad stuff happens - people get stuck in incest, people are violent towards minority groups such as gays, etc, but do I want to read about it? Does it help me to combat it in any way?
Best stories - Epitaph, Long Distance.
January 31, 2017
More gruesome and cruel than 'Night', which is still my favourite Edna O'Brien book. Reading this (published 1990) reminded me of reading Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber and other stories' (published 1979). Haunted by a kind of clinging, cloying, angry, gory sadness/rage to do with being a woman in the world. I don't know how I feel about this and am not sure how relevant and helpful it always is for women now.
But I shouldn't deny that it provokes something in me. And she's certainly a hell of a writer. And funny.
Also, it gets history points. Reading fiction is the closest I normally get to reading history so this was a good glimpse into the past.
But I shouldn't deny that it provokes something in me. And she's certainly a hell of a writer. And funny.
Also, it gets history points. Reading fiction is the closest I normally get to reading history so this was a good glimpse into the past.
April 23, 2019
I can never get too much Edna O'Brien, who has one of the most complex voices ever in literary history. Her observations are witty, merciless yet compassionate. Descriptions of objects transform them into lovely fetishes. She does not need to plot her stories. People and their behavior and her accurate narrative offer plenty of plot for short story or novel, both.
January 7, 2020
Some delightfully described (if not, themselves, delightful) characters. An optimistic spinster. A dreadful Auntie. A quiet town that is full of intrigue. One lesson from these stories: books mustn’t be judged by their covers, if one can forgive the cliché. Not a book for a cheerful introduction to Ireland. This is the Ireland sunshine has largely forsaken.
September 23, 2012
Well-written descriptions of people, places and things but no point to most of them.
February 8, 2017
Great selection of short stories... the "female James Joyce."
August 1, 2020
Loved Long Distance and What a Sky and paragraphs of The Epitaph
May 10, 2024
When I revisit Edna’s stories I feel like I’m re entering a room of my teenage years mind. I can see everything as it was then. I feel what I felt then - like all collections not all stories, even Edna’s, grab me but when one does it’s like being in that space again and sometimes it’s as if a piece of the furniture or decoration of that room is being examined or moved or destroyed and I find myself back in the after school waitress job or the working in the care home job or the pulling pints job, or dealing with some of the life stuff from that time, idk why this happens 🤷🏻♀️.
I know that Edna won’t push all readers buttons but she really does mine. She takes me back into myself and it’s not necessarily always comfortable but I always feel moved by it and I always appreciate it. Weird huh!
“The clouds - dark, massive and purposeful - raced across the sky. At one moment a gap appeared, a vault of blue so deep it looked like a cavity into which one could vanish, but soon the clouds swept across it like trailing curtains removing it from sight.”
⬆️ so often the sky on my recent walks.
Beautifully constructed sentences that elegantly flow are a trademark skill of Edna.
Some more examples below, the first an opener.
“Bridget was her name. She played cards like a trooper, and her tipple was gin-and-lime.”
“Soon she would feel as she had felt long ago - like a river, that winds it’s way back into its first beloved enclave before finally putting out to sea.”
“As she rises to leave, she feels that her heart is in shreds, all over the room. She has left it in his keeping, but he is wildly, helplessly looking for his own.”
Oh Edna.
She describes so well how people grow apart, become estranged or how they were never aligned in the first place.
Importantly I believe she has a fabulous way of, especially in sexual matters, conveying everything without describing all the sordid details; as the reader you are never in any doubt of what has happened, whether it be a consensual encounter or an abusive one. I sometimes wish today’s writers took a note of this way - I believe our minds can take us there with few words; we don’t need it all drawn out. There can be power in few words if they are well selected and gracefully combined.
January 20, 2012
I enjoyed these short stories for their language, their sympathetic view of small town life in Ireland and their believable characters. I believe that Ms O'Brien reflects on the unspoken aspects of the village - affairs, jealousy, secrets etc. I can understand why her work was banned for sometime - although these are not offensive stories - it is just they described a hidden, and of its time 'sinful', Ireland.
Each story started with arresting phrases which instantly set the scene and pulled one in.
For example 'What a sky' starts as follows:
'The clouds - dark, massed and purposeful- raced across the sky. At one moment a gap appeared, a vault of blue so deep it looked like a cavity into which one could vanish, but soon the clouds swept across it like trailing curtains, removing it from sight.'
or at the beginning of 'Oft in the stilly night'
'It is a small somnolent village with a limestone rock that sprawls irregularly over the village green, where sprouts a huge beech tree along with incidental saplings that meander out of it.'
Not all describe the physical setting - some are straight into the mood.
e.g. 'Brother' ' Bad cess to him. Thinks I don't know, that I didn't smell a rat.'
or 'Epitaph' 'When I first met you I thought it too good to be true.'
I could go on, but I think that the point is made now.
Each story started with arresting phrases which instantly set the scene and pulled one in.
For example 'What a sky' starts as follows:
'The clouds - dark, massed and purposeful- raced across the sky. At one moment a gap appeared, a vault of blue so deep it looked like a cavity into which one could vanish, but soon the clouds swept across it like trailing curtains, removing it from sight.'
or at the beginning of 'Oft in the stilly night'
'It is a small somnolent village with a limestone rock that sprawls irregularly over the village green, where sprouts a huge beech tree along with incidental saplings that meander out of it.'
Not all describe the physical setting - some are straight into the mood.
e.g. 'Brother' ' Bad cess to him. Thinks I don't know, that I didn't smell a rat.'
or 'Epitaph' 'When I first met you I thought it too good to be true.'
I could go on, but I think that the point is made now.
February 13, 2017
I am not usually a fan of short stories because I like building a connection with character that takes more pages than the average short story allows for, but Edna O'Brien short stories are something poetic and magical. She packs a single sentence with more description and information than most, and so even if it is a short, short story, as a reader, you really inhabit it. I'm particularly fond of those that are set in the small villages of her native western Ireland, but they are all good, even those set in vacation venues with protagonists who are trying to come to terms with affairs or the dwindling affections of a child. If you've never read O'Brien, you should give her a try.
September 13, 2016
Fifteen years on from reading Lantern Slides, I am left with imagery and mood, like the memory of a picture painted by O'Brien's unique gift for language. With a voice that speaks at times in matter-of-fact, nihilistic tones, she possesses, none-the-less, a cathartic quality which, against the evidence, can bring the solace of acceptance to a troubled soul.
September 26, 2020
Every story fresh and surprising, yet complex. Great build up each time.
September 26, 2021
This book SURPRISED me, in the best way possible.
First of, O'Brien has such a refreshing, distinctive tone - I don't know what the best descriptors for it are, but wry, lilting, and sardonic come to mind. From the few Irish people I've met, I can HEAR the Irish in her stories, and I kind of love that. There are also a couple of lines in this book that absolutely took my breath away, including the last lines: "was as if life were just beginning - tender, spectacular, all-embracing life - and she, like everyone, were jumping up to catch it. Catch it", and "[about how everyone is holding on] Just. If their skins were peeled off, or their chest bones opened, they would literally burst apart." It's so STRIKING in its normalcy, and yet conveys such a keen sense of longing. Shivers down my arms.
Second, the subject matter of these stories is utterly mundane, and so universal - I really love that too. She takes everyday occurrences like tensions with your parents, ruminations on past loves, and nostalgia, and makes them so real and beautiful and tragic. This commentary is so absolutely profound to me (maybe because I'm worried that I'm not living my life properly), but the idea that stubborn or misplaced effort is the true tragedy of our life just hits so close to home. The stories are sad in that there's no resolution - there's just reflection, and this sense that you have to feel the feelings for better or for worse.. will they sweep you away on a wave of emotion or will you wake up the next day and continue as you had before, because there's simply no other choice? I just.. honestly, it rings to true and is so relatable.
If you're looking for plot, this might not be the short story collection for you, but if you're feeling kind of displaced and want to be seen, I'd highly recommend. I just bought another O'Brien book, I was that taken with this woman's writing.
Favourite stories: Epitaph, What a Sky, Long Distance, Lantern Slides
First of, O'Brien has such a refreshing, distinctive tone - I don't know what the best descriptors for it are, but wry, lilting, and sardonic come to mind. From the few Irish people I've met, I can HEAR the Irish in her stories, and I kind of love that. There are also a couple of lines in this book that absolutely took my breath away, including the last lines: "was as if life were just beginning - tender, spectacular, all-embracing life - and she, like everyone, were jumping up to catch it. Catch it", and "[about how everyone is holding on] Just. If their skins were peeled off, or their chest bones opened, they would literally burst apart." It's so STRIKING in its normalcy, and yet conveys such a keen sense of longing. Shivers down my arms.
Second, the subject matter of these stories is utterly mundane, and so universal - I really love that too. She takes everyday occurrences like tensions with your parents, ruminations on past loves, and nostalgia, and makes them so real and beautiful and tragic. This commentary is so absolutely profound to me (maybe because I'm worried that I'm not living my life properly), but the idea that stubborn or misplaced effort is the true tragedy of our life just hits so close to home. The stories are sad in that there's no resolution - there's just reflection, and this sense that you have to feel the feelings for better or for worse.. will they sweep you away on a wave of emotion or will you wake up the next day and continue as you had before, because there's simply no other choice? I just.. honestly, it rings to true and is so relatable.
If you're looking for plot, this might not be the short story collection for you, but if you're feeling kind of displaced and want to be seen, I'd highly recommend. I just bought another O'Brien book, I was that taken with this woman's writing.
Favourite stories: Epitaph, What a Sky, Long Distance, Lantern Slides
April 3, 2024
Ms. O'Brien is a superb writer.
Her language is lyrical, evocative, colorful, graceful and penetrating.
Perhaps it is a cultural thing, but this American had some difficulty understanding many of the words she used. When I read a short story, I want to be involved in it and lose myself in the story. I don't want to stop to open a dictionary several times in every paragraph.
I think the stories in this book did not satisfy me in the way stories do written by authors who come from the US.
However, there is one in this book that was absolutely fantastic, that did keep me engrossed from beginning to end: "Storm." It's the story of an older woman on vacation with her son and his girlfriend. Mother is seething silently because she finds many faults with the younger woman, and is envious of her youth. A blow up ensues, the mother cannot keep her mouth shut, and the two younger people are furious and leave the older woman to pursue their own activities during the day which include sailing a boat. When the children fail to return to by nightfall the older woman imagines all sorts of tragic outcomes. But her biggest regret is her sorrow at having been angry and cruel to her son and his girlfriend.
Ms. O'Brien is worth reading. I've read a few of other novels before and really enjoyed them. I don't want to dissuade anyone from reading her, but just to hear my rather minor point that the very Irish language and culture of the tales are so specific that some my find themselves unable to grasp their full meaning.
Her language is lyrical, evocative, colorful, graceful and penetrating.
Perhaps it is a cultural thing, but this American had some difficulty understanding many of the words she used. When I read a short story, I want to be involved in it and lose myself in the story. I don't want to stop to open a dictionary several times in every paragraph.
I think the stories in this book did not satisfy me in the way stories do written by authors who come from the US.
However, there is one in this book that was absolutely fantastic, that did keep me engrossed from beginning to end: "Storm." It's the story of an older woman on vacation with her son and his girlfriend. Mother is seething silently because she finds many faults with the younger woman, and is envious of her youth. A blow up ensues, the mother cannot keep her mouth shut, and the two younger people are furious and leave the older woman to pursue their own activities during the day which include sailing a boat. When the children fail to return to by nightfall the older woman imagines all sorts of tragic outcomes. But her biggest regret is her sorrow at having been angry and cruel to her son and his girlfriend.
Ms. O'Brien is worth reading. I've read a few of other novels before and really enjoyed them. I don't want to dissuade anyone from reading her, but just to hear my rather minor point that the very Irish language and culture of the tales are so specific that some my find themselves unable to grasp their full meaning.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 29, 2025
I first read a novel by Edna O'Brien in Ireland. It was a murder mystery and quite intriguing! While vacationing at a grand beach house in Outer Banks, North Carolina, I came across, in the library, Lantern Slides, and I immediately began reading it. Her prose is beautiful, her character development engrossing, and her plots have a surprising twist. I have not been disappointed in reading the work of this great novelist!
Marketing copy: Edna O’Brien was an award-winning Irish author of novels, plays, and short stories. She has been hailed as one of the greatest chroniclers of the female experience in the twentieth century. She was the 2011 recipient of the Frank O’Connor Prize, awarded for her short story collection Saints and Sinners. She also received, among other honors, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin, and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Literary Academy. Her 1960 debut novel, The Country Girls, was banned in her native Ireland for its groundbreaking depictions of female sexuality. Notable works also include August Is a Wicked Month (1965), A Pagan Place (1970), Lantern Slides (1990), and The Light of Evening (2006). O’Brien lived in London until her death.
Marketing copy: Edna O’Brien was an award-winning Irish author of novels, plays, and short stories. She has been hailed as one of the greatest chroniclers of the female experience in the twentieth century. She was the 2011 recipient of the Frank O’Connor Prize, awarded for her short story collection Saints and Sinners. She also received, among other honors, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin, and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Literary Academy. Her 1960 debut novel, The Country Girls, was banned in her native Ireland for its groundbreaking depictions of female sexuality. Notable works also include August Is a Wicked Month (1965), A Pagan Place (1970), Lantern Slides (1990), and The Light of Evening (2006). O’Brien lived in London until her death.
August 31, 2024
The audacity of writing a longish short story to close a collection, including a key character named Mr. Conroy, exploring the passions, desires and failures of numerous Irish "nobs," and even ending with a scene "of falling snow," can't be overstated. And yet, O'Brien pulls this off with grace and a style and a story (the title story of the collection) that damn near matches the brilliant one she's riffing off of. Here and throughout, per usual, she adeptly plumbs the psyches of her characters, enlivens her Irish landscapes and reminds once again that a narrative need not be long to provoke and portray a culture.
July 2, 2024
Sad kad bi me neko pitao da prepricam ovu knjigu, ne bih znala iskreno da kazem.
Ostalo mi je jos nekih 38 strana, ali ja stvarno ne mogu da citam nesto, sto mi jednostavno ne ulazi u mozak i sto ne moze ni da mi ostane u mozak.
Ne razumem ovi knjigu, njenu poentu i nista.Bas me je razocarala knjiga, mislila sam da ce biti kao sto je opisana u kratkom opisana, ali nista od toga nije bilo.
Imale su eto dve tri price koje nisu bile toliko lose i zbog njih sam i dala dve zvezdice.
Ostalo mi je jos nekih 38 strana, ali ja stvarno ne mogu da citam nesto, sto mi jednostavno ne ulazi u mozak i sto ne moze ni da mi ostane u mozak.
Ne razumem ovi knjigu, njenu poentu i nista.Bas me je razocarala knjiga, mislila sam da ce biti kao sto je opisana u kratkom opisana, ali nista od toga nije bilo.
Imale su eto dve tri price koje nisu bile toliko lose i zbog njih sam i dala dve zvezdice.
Want to read
November 5, 2021#1
'Spliced her in half,' the young son of the family is fond of saying, as a pathetic re-enactment of the restless mare and her mad bolting is described again and again.
#7
'What is it?' she asked aloud, wondering what particle in the brain is triggered by some smell, or the wind, or a yearling in pain, or a voice sodden with loneliness that says, without meaning it, 'Would you marry me?'
'Spliced her in half,' the young son of the family is fond of saying, as a pathetic re-enactment of the restless mare and her mad bolting is described again and again.
#7
'What is it?' she asked aloud, wondering what particle in the brain is triggered by some smell, or the wind, or a yearling in pain, or a voice sodden with loneliness that says, without meaning it, 'Would you marry me?'
November 19, 2021
Treba čitati Irce, bliži su nam nego što (ne) mislimo...
March 3, 2022
Just finishing this marvelous collection of short stories by the great #Irish writer, Edna O’Brian. Mostly set in her native Ireland, these are snapshots of family and social life.
May 21, 2022
very competent prose studies of people in various crises. wasn't too moved.
April 25, 2023
This is a collection of short stories. While well written, there is no cohesiveness or even common style. I felt it was all a bit scattered.
September 30, 2025
The alternate title being everything I hate about life in Ireland.
Some beautiful prose and impactful stories - one or two that fail to live up to the standard of the others.
Some beautiful prose and impactful stories - one or two that fail to live up to the standard of the others.
October 28, 2025
As with most short story collections, this one has its ups and downs, but all the offerings are worth reading, and the best of them are truly wonderful.
December 20, 2017
My flat received this as a gift from an event at Glasgow Women's Library and I picked this up from our bookshelf thinking 12 short stories would be nice to read on holiday, without needing to keep up with an over-arching story if I got too distracted. Unfortunately I disliked the first seven or so that I didn't finish the rest.
I "enjoyed" that the characters were from Irish background, and the little colloquialisms and Irish-isms I recognised throughout. Much of the banter/gossip is the type I recognise from hearing my grandmother and aunts talking around me when I was growing up, which is fitting with a publication date of 1990/1991.
I couldn't relate to the characters or stories at all. Each story seems to feature an older, unhappy, busybody, Irish woman who feels it her place to butt into the lives of the men around her - sons, brothers, former lovers - much to the displeasure of them and their partners. The behaviour reeks of desperation and it makes highly unpleasant reading. Perhaps I was meant to feel more sympathy for each of the characters for being forgotten and left behind, but I couldn't muster it.
The blurb on my edition didn't particularly give much away about the stories, but an excerpt I found online from an out-of-print edition reads "Twelve stories deal with love, incest, passion, aging, death, and loneliness", which would have better prepared me to read this.
Maybe if I was older, or if I wasn't on holiday, or if I wasn't so easily annoyed I could have approach this in a much more level way. But I'm not any of those things, sorry.
I "enjoyed" that the characters were from Irish background, and the little colloquialisms and Irish-isms I recognised throughout. Much of the banter/gossip is the type I recognise from hearing my grandmother and aunts talking around me when I was growing up, which is fitting with a publication date of 1990/1991.
I couldn't relate to the characters or stories at all. Each story seems to feature an older, unhappy, busybody, Irish woman who feels it her place to butt into the lives of the men around her - sons, brothers, former lovers - much to the displeasure of them and their partners. The behaviour reeks of desperation and it makes highly unpleasant reading. Perhaps I was meant to feel more sympathy for each of the characters for being forgotten and left behind, but I couldn't muster it.
The blurb on my edition didn't particularly give much away about the stories, but an excerpt I found online from an out-of-print edition reads "Twelve stories deal with love, incest, passion, aging, death, and loneliness", which would have better prepared me to read this.
Maybe if I was older, or if I wasn't on holiday, or if I wasn't so easily annoyed I could have approach this in a much more level way. But I'm not any of those things, sorry.
April 18, 2016
I was impressed by her "Paradise" story in an anthology, so I got this collection from the library.
"oft in the stilly night" is addressed to a passive "you", the putative reader. It ends on p.23 with a final paragraph starting "Now I ask you, what would you do? Would you comfort Ita … Perhaps your own village is much the same, perhaps everywhere is, perhaps pity is a luxury and deliverance a thing of the past"
"Epitaph" begins "When first I met you". In this case the 'you' is a character in the plot.
Other stories deal with visiting old parents, brother/sister incest, a mother going on holiday with her son and his fiance. Then more holidays, more visits to relatives, Irish village gossip and continental beaches. There's none of the spareness and power of "Paradise".
"oft in the stilly night" is addressed to a passive "you", the putative reader. It ends on p.23 with a final paragraph starting "Now I ask you, what would you do? Would you comfort Ita … Perhaps your own village is much the same, perhaps everywhere is, perhaps pity is a luxury and deliverance a thing of the past"
"Epitaph" begins "When first I met you". In this case the 'you' is a character in the plot.
Other stories deal with visiting old parents, brother/sister incest, a mother going on holiday with her son and his fiance. Then more holidays, more visits to relatives, Irish village gossip and continental beaches. There's none of the spareness and power of "Paradise".
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