The High Road

by Edna O'Brien

First edition hard cover with unclipped dust jacket, both in very good condition for their age. General shelf and handling wear, including light scoring to rear DJ cover, with light creasing to cover, edges, corners and folds.. Notable tanning to pageblock, leading into page edges. Boards are in fine condition, pages tightly bound, content unmarked. CN

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Literary Fiction, Classics, Spain, Irish Literature

180 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1988

About the author

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.

Reviews

[nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

“𝘞𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥, 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘣𝘴, 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦.”

Much like Hitchcock’s Rear Window
in terms of curiosity killing the cat and awakening that Peeping Tom third eye. Looking into the lives of those around you colors a life larger than yours, more beautiful, more rich. Kind of beautiful to have read this on a flight, wondering about all those sleeping lives around me, trapped in the dark on a hunk of metal chucked sky high from Seoul to LA, all of us so different from each other but headed the same way, for the same kind of sun, pleasure and weather.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very odd little book. It didn't feel like a novel or even a novella; it felt like O'Brien was trying out characters that she might want to use in a later work. People come and go and don't really have any purpose in the story. And there's a strange mix of comedy and brutal tragedy, along with some convoluted syntax and peculiar switching between tenses. That said, I enjoyed it!

[A. Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published almost twenty-five years ago, this novel is as daring as one expects an O'Brien novel to be. Here, she explores what shattered love does to women, how humiliating love is, focussing on a character who escapes to Spain to find a way to heal herself and encounters numerous other broken people, mostly female. What the protagonist learns, among other things, is that love is love whether a man or woman feels it for a man or woman. She wonders what kind of measure prescribed sexuality is, does something change within us if we experience or act on desire for someone of the same sex, when we've always experienced hetero desire. O'Brien creates cringe-worthy moments when she shows one character acting out her desperate, beggar's need to be loved or wanted. There's nothing we won't do to be loved or desired. Still, even though this is not a flippant book, it is not so sober that it has no humour, and O'Brien's hand is sure and her craft is strong.

[Peter Stockwell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really did not like this book. For me it was cliche upon cliche. I was delighted that it was only 180 pages long.

[Abby Adelman · Rating 3 out of 5]

if only this entire book was as good as it was during the final 30 pages. until then, i had sworn off o’brien forever, but now i think i’ll read her more acclaimed novels. nearly the entire book was a failed and unimportant character study, until by the end she so eloquently describes death and love and the helplessness that comes out of it. so close to great 😫

[Gayle · Rating 1 out of 5]

The initial charm wore off

[Lori Bamber · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was sure I'd love anything written by Edna O'Brien, whose writing I adore, but this is a somewhat experimental novel that just didn't land for me. I couldn't get through the second chapter. That said, I'm putting it on my bookshelf, because it may be that if I read it slowly enough I will mesh with the slow, intricate pace. I'll save it for retirement.

[Julie Whelan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some gorgeous descriptive prose describing a small village in southern Spain which has become an enclave for expatriots. Unfortunately I felt the some of the characters were very 2 dimentionsal.

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Odd story, characters that come and go without adding much to the story. Shows O Brien’s mastery of the language but the plot could use some work.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This year Kim from Reading Matters and Cathy from 746 Books have been co-hosting A Year of Edna O'Brien so The High Road at 180 pages was an ideal choice for #NovNov (Novellas in November). This is the book description from the inside jacket cover of my first edition:

Edna O'Brien's first novel in eleven years is a triumph.  It is a rich, passionate account of lost love and the return to loving, where currents of regret and loneliness clash with a fiery instinct for survival.  A Spanish seaside enclave finds many women trying to pacify their memories: the imperious Iris, no longer young; Charlotte, the glittering debutante whose thirst for life has driven her to bitter withdrawal; and Anna , the wounded narrator, who senses in the young Spanish girl Catalina a rare chance to defy the ravages of time and find a renewal of hope. But the landscape of the heart is laid with mines, and new dangers attend on new loves.

The High Road marks Edna O'Brien's long-awaited return to the literary scene.  Intense, lyrical, masterfully written, here is a novel where the ease and light of the Mediterranean thrown into relief the machinations and darkness of man and woman.

Got that?  Middle-aged woman with a broken heart goes to a small Spanish town full of other women disappointed by life, (all of whom conveniently speak English), and has a crush on a servant girl at the hotel. #SpoilerAlert: It ends badly, especially for the servant girl.

It wasn't until my curiosity got the better of me and I Googled to find out from the Guardian why a successful author would have a hiatus of eleven years, and then write this oddly disjointed novel, that the penny dropped. Characters that seem utterly absurd are drawn from her own life.

The book begins with an absorbing account of her desperate misery after the break-up of a long relationship.  We're not told exactly what precipitated the break-up.  Perhaps he was a married man. Perhaps she just got older and was replaced by a trophy.  Whatever, the demolition of her expectations in middle-age has a devastating effect and she doesn't know what to do with herself.  It wasn't clear to me why she thought going to Spain would help with her distress.  She doesn't speak the language and has nothing to do while she's there.  She doesn't hire a car (maybe she doesn't drive?) so that she can go exploring or discover Spain's rich history, art and architecture. She doesn't do some kind of creative activity to pour out her emotions.

She is there, as my mother would say, to wallow.

But, since we have all had a broken heart at some stage, we empathise with her hopeless aimlessness and feel optimistic that Something Will Happen to Sort Her Out. Plus, no doubt about this, O'Brien writes exquisite prose.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/11/13/t...

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ladies of means meander in the Mediterranean to sort out their personal messes and mostly men-free lives. Things do not work out well. O'Brien's observations, via our wandering narrator and a new Mr. D'arcy, are typically tart and have a touch of drama, but the story and characters need more heart. Not surprisingly, even attempting the high road is fraught with danger.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Why hadn’t I read this book before?

[Anna Swenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favorite Edna O'Brien novel

[Juliette Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was not expecting the end to be that at all

[Tim Nason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first Edna O'Brien, so I don't know how it compares with her other novels, but I felt from the start that I was in very capable hands. The story, told in the first person, is about a woman, Anna, from Ireland, who has arrived at an isolated place, said on the cover of the book to be "a small Spanish island," where she can seek a kind of refuge or respite from a bad love relationship and also from a recent career as a history lecturer where she sought to describe her homeland "as permeated with an emptiness redolent of the still greater emptiness, giving a sense having been stranded, left behind by history and by the world at large, a severed limb of a land full of hurt and rage". Anna is obviously in need of replenishment.

But first she has to find a suitable place to stay, a process that continues her sense of dislocation. In her search, she encounters a series of very eccentric and disturbing characters. I think many are expatriates. The places she experiences and the people she meets further mirror her fragmented sense of self. At length she is settled in a small hotel and from this place among waiters and other helpful staff she is able to relax and feel herself accepting her situation and becoming more assured and expansive.

Even so, this novel is no idyl. Every page is rife with tension and a tinge of menace. Flowers are brought to her room, but she also sees that other "flowers, strewn about the table, looked as if they had landed there in some primordial storm." Yet she wishes to see her life at the hotel as bringing her the comfort she craves. "I thought how could anyone not want to remain alive in a world where such tender things exist."

This feeling of hopefulness reaches out most strongly toward the young woman who brings the flowers and tends to her room, and it is with this young woman that Anna will experience a near-Arcadian feeling of union and devotion. The remaining three-quarters of the book tells incrementally how this relationship will transgress local social codes and bring the novel back to its opening atmosphere of despair and dislocation. (I am evasive here to not give away the ending.)

This is not an easy book, its moments of gentleness appear sparingly. Just as Anna may often wonder why she had come to the strange Spanish island, you may wonder why you are reading this strange novel. Persist. It slightly reminded me of a Paul Bowles novel, "Up Above the World" (1966), and very much reminded me of the Marguerite Duras book "Four Novels" (1959-1965). I think the characters in all three books share feelings of severe dislocation and menace combined with a kind of faith or hopefulness that things will soon improve. But these authors have other and perhaps brutal things to say about ideals of love and refuge and escape and the human condition.

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first novel by O'Brien, and it was quite an introduction. Set on a Spanish island it is at first only redeemed by the author's florid descriptions of the landscape, the people, and their customs, set in stark contrast to the decadence of the seemingly Euro-trash visitors who form it's economic lifeline. The most life-affirming description is of the girl Catalina, with whom Anna, the narrator, in time falls in love. Death is never far from the forefront however and while the island may appear paradisical, in the end the tragic reality of male passion and rage and brutality crashes in on the feminine with horrific results. A short but bracing novel.

[Delphine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The high road features a traumatised heroine, seeking refuge in a small town on the Mediterranean. Anna seeks comfort from a devastating love affair in nature, ludicrous conversations with other foreign oddballs and the hotel's chambermaid, Catalina. Catalina represents nature, mystery and simplicity. Anna feels drawn to this exotic, incomprehensible creature. A relationship develops, which will have catastrophic consequences in the end (slander, murder, Anna returning home, having been cheated once more)

I felt pretty weird reading this novel. It has a very eerie, uncomfortable atmosphere, seemingly unrealistic, too. Anna is loaded with pain; to her, Catalina represents everything that she would like to be. The novel offers some great descriptions of Mediterranean nature and horizons. O'Brien is obviously a gifted writer, even though her imagery is sometimes forced and stereotypical.

The high road would be a great holiday read, if it weren't for this subcurrent of pain, unease and trauma.

[Kallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this one twice. As usual, she speaks to compulsion and yearning rather than rationality -- but beautifully.

[Cliona]

After my love affair with "The Light of Evening", I was a little disappointed with this.