The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue

The Country Girls Trilogy #1

by Edna O'Brien

“Delicious...wholly original...sensitive as a harp string...captures the vigilance of childhood and reproduces, eerily intact, its heightened sensations.”
—Newsday

From the acclaimed author of Country Girl: A Memoir
Kate and Baba are two ambitious Irish country girls in search of life: romantic Kate seeks love, while pragmatic Baba will take whatever she can get. Together they set out to conquer Dublin and the world. Under the big city’s bright lights, they spin their lives into a whirl of comic and touching misadventures, wild flirtations, and reckless passions. But love changes everything. And as their lives take unexpected and separate turns, Baba and Kate must ultimately learn to go it alone.

A beautiful portrait of the pain and joy of youth, the ruin of marriage gone wrong, and the ache of lost friendship and love, this trilogy of Edna O’Brien’s remarkable early novels is more than just a harbinger of the stunning and masterly writer she has become.

 

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, Classics, Coming Of Age, Novels, Literary Fiction

532 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

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

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A healing balm, this book is, for a reader who's been sort of lost in the "depths" of contemporary fiction recently. Books that are about something, that's clear, but exactly what that is, isn't. Or the 'what' is clear but the writing is mud.

The last month of my reading life was sloggish, I'm not going to lie. Then I picked up this book.

The Country Girls doesn't require deep analysis or brilliant deductions on the part of the reader. No, this short debut novel does all the work for you. It picks you up and transports you to 1950s Ireland, into the life and mind of 14 year old Kaithleen Brady. It tells you a story you're only too happy to drop into, with heart and humour.

This slice of life is lyrically told, and invites us into Kait's troubled country home. It delves into her friendship with Baba (Bridget) which is often more of a "frenemy" relationship, and which brings to mind Elena Ferrante's two main characters from the Neapolitan series. It follows her into school at a convent, and then eventually a move to the big city, Dublin.

This delightful Bildungsroman caused a big stir when it was published, for being on the bawdy side (in fact, it was banned in Ireland and publicly burned by a priest, for goodness' sake). It will likely seem pretty tame to most modern readers, but it is a bit shocking that the mysterious Mr Gentleman (who is married and has grey hair) takes such an interest in 14 year old Kaithleen.

By the way, I absolutely loved how O'Brien manages to create a character out of... a name. "Mr Gentleman" - so called because the Irish community cannot for the life of them pronounce his actual French surname, de Maurier - both inhabits and repulses our connotations of the word gentleman.

My first time reading O'Brien, I'm amazed to learn that this book was written in THREE WEEKS, and marvel at her ability to give voice to the female experience in this time and place, especially with such honesty. She makes no excuses for Baba or Kait as they blunder through adolescence. They are who they are - and I can't wait to spend more time with these two, just as they are.

This is book one of a trilogy, and it ends sort of abruptly, leaving me a bit bereft. I will have to find out what happens next, and what a pleasure that will be!

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

BRAVE RAGAZZE



Un libro importante: sessant’anni dopo lo si cita e se ne parla, e per fortuna lo si legge anche. Credo lo si possa ormai considerare un classico.
Era un esordio. Di una trentenne dagli occhi verdi. Che poi ha continuato a scrivere, a inanellare bei libri e successo: ora è scrittrice del pantheon. Edna O’Brien.
Applausi a Feltrinelli che seppe intuire subito, e prima di tutti, cogliere l’attimo: Country Girls uscì nel 1960 in lingua inglese, l’anno dopo uscì in italiano questo Ragazze di campagna.



Si tratta del primo di una trilogia, che prosegue con La ragazza dagli occhi verdi e si conclude con Ragazze nella felicità coniugale.

È la storia di due amiche geniali, Caithleen, detta Cait, e Baba, che crescono nella cattolicissima, quindi retrograda, repressiva, violenta Irlanda (gli scandali vengono fuori sempre più spesso, e preti e suore sono più che spesso coinvolti).
La campagna, le fattorie, generalmente in stato di decadenza, pelle pallida e capelli rossi, padri ubriaconi facili ad alzare le mani in famiglia (l’alcol va per la maggiore), madri rassegnate triste esempio (che finiscono con morire sempre troppo presto), il gioco d’azzardo, la religione, il convento di suore, il puritanesimo, la morale bigotta soffocante… Non manca nulla dell’immagine più classica di questo piccolo paese.



Le nostre due ‘brave ragazze’ sono diverse: Cait è dolce e romantica e ingenua, Baba è più disinvolta e pragmatica e trasgressiva. Ma sono perfettamente d’accordo nel voler rivendicare i loro diritti, nel loro forte desiderio di voler evadere da quel posto e da quella realtà, nel volersi esprimere, vivere i sentimenti, discutere e praticare ciò che intorno a loro viene considerato tabù, liberarsi del collegio e delle suore e delle loro famiglie retrograde ferme ad un’altra epoca, conquistare la libertà.
E così riescono a farsi espellere dalle suore e ad approdare a Dublino. Alla conquista del mondo:
Eravamo giovani e belle, o almeno eravamo convinte di esserlo.



Le luci della città, le “mille luci” di Babilonia, non riservano esattamente per le due ragazze di campagna la realizzazione immediata dei loro sogni di emancipazione: ci saranno dure prove, momenti difficili. Non sempre potranno restare vicine.
Ma saranno comunque e finalmente libere.
O’Brien m’ha regalato amarezza tristezza ironia e commozione, m’ha trasmesso i fermenti che stavano esplodendo nell’altra capitale, Londra, ma che in qualche modo anche Dublino conosceva. E io non sono affatto d’accordo con chi trova il questa bella storia di formazione datata, ormai inchiodata a quell’epoca: per me non è né superato né vecchio.

Ah, per la cronaca: in Irlanda il romanzo alla sua uscita fu messo all’indice bruciato davanti alle chiese.
Fortunatamente Edna O’Brien si era già trasferita a Londra e poteva mandare irriverenti allegre linguacce ai bifolchi bigotti di casa.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

RIP Edna O'Brien 15 December 1930 - 27 July 2024

The Country Girls, her first one, is a classic. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't love it.




*****

Here is a beautiful probably-autobiographical wee slip of a novel which reads more like a memoir about two Irish girls between the ages of 14 and 18 in which nothing much happens except ordinary poor country life stuff, the girls being bored witless and trying to grow up, the girls being righteously disgusted about what's on offer in the back of the Irish beyond in the early 50s before Elvis and rock & roll rewrote the rules, the girls putting up with drunk parents, bitter adults and useless boys. Caithleen and Baba (Bridget really), with Caithleen the narrator perpetually told she's a right looking eedjit by Baba, who always knows what to do and who with, or thinks she does, and can't wait to be expelled from the convent school they get sent to.

Baba on the convent school :

"Jesus, tis hell. I won't stick it for a week. I'll drink Lysol or any damn thing to get out of here. I'd rather be a Protestant."

Caithleen on the convent school food :

"Caithleen Brady, why don't you eat your cabbage?" said Sister Margaret.
"There's a fly in it, Sister," I said. It was a slug really, but I didn't like to hurt her feelings.

Later that same meal :


My meat was brutal-looking and it had a faint smell as if it had gone off. I sniffed it again and knew that I couldn't eat it.

(The girls all surreptitiously smuggle the grisly meat out of the school wrapped in handkerchiefs. They dump it in the local duck pond when they go on their prescribed walk.)

The following sums up Caithleen and Baba's relationship :

"Can you post eggs to England?" I asked Baba.
"Of course you can post eggs to England if you want the postman to deliver a box of sop and mush with egg white running up his sleeve. If you want to be a moron you can post eggs to England but they'll turn into chickens on the way."

The other main relationship in this novel is one which provides a curious and interesting comment on the great discussion we had here on Goodreads in Spring this year about Lolita. When Caithleen is 14 years old she begins a kind-of affair with a married man. He's a family friend, age not given but he has grey hair, he is clearly besotted with her and she him. They do nothing but meet occasionally and kiss. This goes on for some years. There's no hint anywhere of him being morally wrong in any way until other people find out. Up to that point it's presented as a sweet sweet romance. The Country Girls was published five years after Lolita.

Being a country girl, Caithleen almost without realising it is in love with nature, it bubbles up all the time. Here is a lovely example :

There was a man mowing the Brennan's front lawn when we got out of the car. It was a cold sunny day and over under the rhododendron shrub there were crocuses in bloom. Yellow-ochre crocuses. The wind had got inside some of them and the petals had fallen down on the grass. they looked like pieces of crepe paper just thrown there. There were primroses too. A cluster of them round the root of the sycamore tree. They cut the tree because they were afraid it would fall on the house in a big wind. Mr Brennan had grown ivy round the root and had trailed it across the ugly brown stump and now there were primroses, merry little primroses, shooting up through the ivy. I had been looking at primrose leaves for seventeen years and I had never noticed before that their leaves were hairy and old and wrinkled. i kept looking at them. Always on the brink of trouble I look at something, like a tree or a flower or an old shoe, to keep me from palpitating. "Chrisake, go in," said Baba.

Further comment is superfluous.

[Julie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven’t had a reading experience like this one in a while. A long while.

I don’t mean that I haven’t been reading good books; I have, but I haven’t been on a bender, a reading bender, in far too long.

I could see, by a quick search on this site, that my female friends rated this novel higher than my male friends. This makes perfect sense to me. It isn’t that a male reader couldn’t enjoy this novel or appreciate the merit of Ms. O’Brien’s technical prowess as a writer; it’s just that this is a story that, to me, truly captures what it feels like to be a woman.

Or, maybe I should clarify: what it has felt like, to be a woman, for a long time now, particularly starting in the twentieth century. Whether this is changing or not remains to be seen.

The author, Edna O’Brien, was born in Ireland, forty years before I was, and her main characters, Cait and Baba, are the products of a rural small town. They have been shaped by gossip, organized religion (Catholicism), and poverty, among other things like domestic abuse and early traumas.

These two girls, who are merely 14-years-old when we first meet them, can’t make it down the street or dash into a market without a man in the village wrapping his arm around their waists and being told, “Give us a kiss.” Items are withheld from the girls, if they don’t comply with kisses and other nonsense, and both adult men and women from the village look on with ambivalence, taking these behaviors a customary norms, and not objecting. (It takes a village).

Ms. O’Brien navigates this small town brilliantly and we learn, as readers, that Cait is prettier than Baba, but Baba is wealthier and has a more stable home life. The author never insults us by spoon feeding us our porridge; she shows us how others respond to these “country girls” and we learn so very much from such behavior.

The time depicted is the 1950s and the girls, despite having some modern aspirations for themselves, can see, quickly, that they must play along with the social mores of the town, or be relegated to the life of an outcast or a nun. The options are still surprisingly limited in this modern day.

They sense, early on, that the only freedom they may experience in their lifetimes will be in the brief window that will open for them between high school and marriage and they know, also, that they will only know freedom if they can make it to the bright lights, big city of Dublin.

As they set their sights for Dublin, they must dodge the men around them like the little frog in the classic video game, “Frogger.” Cait, with her exceptional beauty and her startling auburn hair, is particularly at risk, and she learns, at a young age, that men want beauty and smiles, but they don’t want any “backtalk” or controversial opinions.

In one line, spoken by Cait (to a male suitor), Ms. O’Brien’s writing brought me to quick tears:

“And if I’m not nice, then will you change your mind?”

I don’t know about any other woman reading this, but this one line could be the title of my own memoir. Personally, I can travel back, in my mind, to every man I ever dated (including the one I married), and tell you the exact moment when his “perfect” impression of me shifted and never returned to the former feeling.

I am sorry if I offend any hetero men in writing this (though most of you probably deserve it anyway), but I think this long-held opinion, that woman should be “seen and not heard” and be “sugar and spice and everything nice” is a whole lotta big bull-shitty badness that we’ve still got to battle our way through.

I know that I’m still dealing with it, and I know that my teenaged daughters are still dealing with it, too.

I doubt that Edna O’Brien stepped forward, in 1960, to make any sort of political statement. Honestly, I think she was just speaking her truth. Kinda badass, wasn’t it now?



All I can tell you is that I was ready to take up residence in this short novel, and I am moving on immediately, to the next installment in the trilogy, THE LONELY GIRL.

(This was a buddy read with the ever thoughtful Lisa)

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha gustado muchísimo, y eso que es un libro raro y a veces me ha sacado de quicio por sus personajes (a los que amas y odias con locura).
Pero ha sido un viaje maravilloso del que me quedo con la voz de Edna O'Brien, una autora con la que voy a repetir, porque tiene una fuerza y una intensidad increíble.
Esta trilogía (que recomiendo leer del tirón) narra la vida de dos amigas a lo largo de toda su vida, dos chicas "de campo" irlandesas, en plenos años 50. El libro ahonda sobre lo que suponía nacer mujer en Irlanda en esa época, en una sociedad tan machista y católica.
Es un libro muy feminista, consigue mostrar a la perfección la vida de estas mujeres cuyas vidas desde su nacimiento hasta su muerte estaban supeditadas a los deseos de los hombres.
Acabas el libro con mucha rabia, desencanto, pena. Pero es una gran lectura, que creo que me va a dejar un poso importante.
Ahora que no me venga nadie con lo de #notallmen porque MATO

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

At times while reading this I was thinking “If I could give 10 stars to this I would”. It was that good. To consider that this was written in 1960 is even more remarkable.

At one point I was laughing so hard I was crying. I can’t recall the last time that a book did that to me.

Baba was a hoot. What a bad-ass character.

I’m surprised this was a rather short book. In the Faber and Faber edition (the trilogy) it was only 223 pages.

I would have read this in one sitting if I had not had deadlines on my job to meet. It was that good! Sometimes I wonder when I come across books like this, and how long it has been available to read, where I have been all these years.

From what I can gather this book is semi-memoirish. Caithleen, the main character who is 14 years old at the beginning of the story, went to a convent school, and so did Edna O’Brien. Caithleen’s mother had briefly been to America, and so had O’Brien’s mother. Both fathers drank a lot and were violent. But Edna’s mother did not die when she was only a girl, as did Caithleen’s mother.

Edna O’Brien said she wrote this book in 3 weeks, which I find remarkable. She must have pulled an all-niter in there somewhere.

The narrator of the story is Caithleen growing up in rural Ireland – time period I think is 1920s-1930s.

So many things I liked about the book. Never a dull moment. It is wonderful prose. It’s not written with flowery sentences or with truly complex and wise thoughts…after all the girl is only 14 and comes from an impoverished environment.

Here’s the part that had me in stitches. Caithleen visits a man’s house — Jack Holland lives there with his very old mother.
• “Jack, I’m dying” the voice moaned. I jumped off the tea chest, but Jack put a hand on my shoulder and made me sit down again. “She’s just curious to know who’s here,” he said. He didn’t bother to whisper.
• “Jack, I’m dying,” the voice said again, and Jack swore hot-temperedly and ran into the kitchen. I followed him.
• “Good God Almighty, you’re on fire,” he shouted. There was a smell of something burning.
• “On fire,” she said, looking at him like a baby.
• “Goddam it, take your shoes out of the ashes,” he said. She had the toe of her black canvas shoe in the bed of ashes under the grate.
It’s probably one of those deals where you have to have been reading all the stuff preceding it that makes it “lol-cry-your-eyes-out-funny”. Oh, well….

And I don’t want to give the impression this is a book of humor. It has sad moments too. It’s a slice-of-life story of a girl growing up into womanhood in Ireland in the 1920s-1930s. The book was banned in Ireland when it came out…it was a huge hit elsewhere.

Reviews:
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
• https://www.curledup.com/countryg.htm
• https://746books.com/2015/03/30/no-68...

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her memoirs, Edna O'Brien recounts a life mainly devoted to writing, the journey of a Country Girl, a free and independent woman who did not give in to the pressure of a conservative society, taking the risk of being ostracised.
Edna O'Brien's desire to become a writer began when she was very young and lived in an Irish village with many drinking establishments and not a single library. If the men are not particularly pious, the women pray fervently; she talks about the country's bigotry, ignorance, and poverty. After studying pharmacy in Dublin, Edna, who still hopes to be "admitted into the world of letters," becomes a columnist for a women's newspaper. At this time, she met her future husband (they would have two sons and quarreled over custody during their divorce a few years later) and wrote her first novel, Country Girls. This book caused a scandal and made her husband jealous, but it marked the beginning of his literary success and openness to the world.
An opening materialized through meetings with many famous men, intellectuals, actors, and politicians. "Lovers or brothers," to use her expression, of which Edna describes at length (a little too much) the facts and gestures in these memoirs, not devoid of lyricism, humor, and sensitivity, is an illuminating testimony of Irish intellectual life (and English ) over the past five decades. As a privileged observer of her country's social and political life, Edna evokes, among other things, the IRA and the war with the English that she describes as "between carnage and counter-carnage" and an Ireland under the domination of her country, a ubiquitous Catholic Church. (and tainted: the Ryan and Murphy report will denounce, much later, the acts of which certain religions are guilty towards children). An uncompromising vision of her country, Edna O'Brien recalls that he has also produced immense authors, such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Oscar Wilde, to name but a few.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The smartest and most hilarious possible response to the catastrophe of being born female in the rural west of Ireland at mid-century.

The trilogy actually encompasses three books – The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, and Girls in Their Married Bliss. They follow the highly intelligent but spacy Caithleen and her forcefully self-centered “best” friend Baba on a trajectory that huge numbers of Irish women’s lives took during those decades – from farm to convent school to Dublin and finally into London. The books make no claims, however, as to their representative status. Instead, the first two books stay scrupulously grounded in the consciousness of Caithleen, our first-person narrator, who proves a good story teller, if a bad interpreter of what precisely the story means. All sorts of men crowd themselves into the orphaned Caithleen’s life, and part of the first novel’s tension comes from the judgments the reader will inevitably make about who might help Kate out and who might do her ill: judgments Caithleen seems unable to form for herself. But by the second book we’ve been served notice that our Jane-Eyre-inflected fantasies of upward mobility skew OUR perception quite badly, and it becomes apparent what Caithleen needs the chain-smoking, good-time-grabbing, light-me-a-cigarette-will-ya Baba for. What seems like Baba’s destruction of Caithleen’s chances to “make something of herself” in the first book is decidedly revealed in the second book as a narrow escape.

I was a bit apprehensive about the third book, which abandons Caithleen’s first-person narration for chapters that, when dealing with Caithleen, are written with an elegant third-person omniscience, and when dealing with Baba, are written in Baba’s voice. The Baba chapters are among the funniest in a very funny trilogy. The Caithleen chapters are a bit sad – not just because the content is sad, but because the author can no longer imagine Caithleen speaking for herself about what it’s like to be Caithleen. At some point Edna O’Brien escaped being Caithleen by becoming a world-famous author. That she doesn’t lazily award Caithleen the same ending is to her credit. That she can only approach Caithleen from the outside, using the compensations of her own much more worldly voice to bring her near us suggests something about Caithleen – or thousands of women like her – that got lost for good.

At the very end of the trilogy, Baba finds Kate reading “a newspaper article about women who for the purpose of scientific experiment had volunteered to spend a fortnight in an underground cave. Kate read: ‘Doctors in touch by telephone from an adjacent cave continue to be astonished at the physical resilience and lively spirits of the women, who were unknown to each other before the vigil began.’” And that’s pretty much what the entire trilogy is about – listening in from another cave, and discovering that even when buried underground, smothered in dark, small spaces, women keep chattering and laughing and carrying on.

[Guille · Rating 2 out of 5]

Durante los primeros cuatro o cinco capítulos llegué a pensar si no sería una versión femenina de Tom Sawyer (Baba me parecía un personaje a medio camino entre Huck y Tom, Jack Holland me producía la misma repulsión que Willie Mufferson, el niño modelo al que todos odiaban en la historia de Twain, encontraba semejanzas entre el empleado que trabajaba en casa de Caithleen y Jim, el esclavo negro, y tampoco faltaba el padre borracho al que todos temían). Más adelante, por momentos, el tono me recordó al de Las cenizas de Ángela, ya saben, eso de contar miserias y atrocidades con sencillez, naturalidad y un cierto tono melancólico. Pero carecía del humor y la ironía de la obra de McCourt.

Estoy seguro de que Philip Roth, Alice Munro, John Berger o Kingsley Amis saben de esto mucho más que yo y doy por supuesto que han leído muchas más obras de esta autora que un servidor, pero no he encontrado en esta novela nada más que una novela juvenil bien escrita y yo estoy ya muy mayor para casi todas las novelas juveniles.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Madre mía. Esto no es para nada lo que esperaba encontrar en esta trilogía. Esperaba un relato divertido y nostálgico, a ratos edulcorado, a ratos sarcástico, crítico con su tiempo pero a la vez con momentos tiernos. Y lo que me he encontrado es una historia crudísima que me ha dejado bastante hecha polvo al final.
Enseguida ves que las dos protagonistas están lejos de ser personajes edulcorados y "perfectos". Sus virtudes y defectos van saliendo a partes iguales y las moldean a medida que van madurando. Muchas veces estaba totalmente en desacuerdo con sus decisiones, y aún así sólo podía esperar a que las cosas al final les fueran bien. Ser mujer nunca ha sido un camino de rosas, y la Irlanda católica de los años cincuenta-sesenta no es ninguna excepción.

- Las chicas de campo: 4*
En el primer libro conocemos a Caithleen y a Baba, dos amigas con una relación bastante peculiar y con dos temperamentos bastante opuestos. Su infancia en la Irlanda rural estará marcada por sus circunstancias familiares, su personalidad, por carencias e ilusiones.

- La chica de ojos verdes: 2.5-3*:
Me ha parecido el más flojo. Las protagonistas están en el final de su adolescencia/principio de su veintena. Por desgracia, durante bastante parte del libro Baba está ausente y sólo seguimos la historia de Caithleen. Para mi, ha sido el más flojo porque creo que se recrea una y otra vez en lo mismo (la relación de Kate con un hombre casado) y creo que desaprovecha otras tramas.

- Chicas felizmente casadas: 4*
A pesar de que por lo que he visto mucha gente lo considera el más flojo de la trilogía a mi me ha parecido que la forma cómo está contada la historia en este libro es la justa para que cobre la fuerza que merece. En este libro BABA toma las riendas con capítulos contados en primera persona que se alternan con capítulos de Kate (Caithleen) en tercera (como hasta ahora). La voz de Baba es sarcástica, mordaz y cruda, y es imprescindible para contar el final de la historia de las dos amigas.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warning: Possible spoilers. Though I don't think they will spoil the reading experience, if you are one of those people who wants to dive into a book without knowing anything of the story, it might be better to avoid this review.

Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

This quote is taken from Frank McCourt’s memoir Angela's Ashes, but it is equally apt for this novel by Edna O’Brien.

If we look at Ireland in the first half of the Twentieth Century, three things immediately jump out at you: crippling poverty, intense religiosity and totally dysfunctional families. The family of Caithleen Brady, the first person narrator, is no different – with a violent drunkard father who is largely absent, a long-suffering mother, and a farm that is slowly being run into the ground. In this dismal universe, her only solace is her mother; and her friend, Brigitte (“Baba”) Brennan (though she turns out to be toxic and narcissistic).

Caithleen’s world is turned upside down when her mother walks out on her father, to stay with her aunt – and is subsequently drowned. To make matters worse, the family house is lost to mortgage, and she is forced to stay with Baba’s family. Soon, the girls go on to a convent for higher studies; Caithleen on a scholarship and Baba on her parent’s money. They ultimately end up in Dublin with its colourful nights of dance, drink, fun and fornication – and a coming-of-age with its attendant pains and brutal heartbreak.

***

O’Brien’s prose is spare, and the viewpoint of an adolescent (who is naive and mature in equal measure) is maintained throughout. This makes it an easy read. But that in no way means it is simplistic. The author has the extraordinary ability to sketch with a few deft strokes. For example, this is what Caithleen has to say about her mother:

...In her brown dress she looked sad, the farther I went the sadder she looked. Like a sparrow in the snow, brown and anxious and lonesome. It was hard to think that she got married one sunny morning in a lace dress and a floppy buttercup hat, and that her eyes were moist with pleasure when now they were watery with tears.

Compare this with Martha, Baba’s mother:

Martha was what the villagers called fast. Most nights she went down to the Greyhound Hotel, dressed in a tight black suit with nothing under the jacket only a brassiere, and with a chiffon scarf knotted at her throat. Strangers and commercial travellers admired her. Pale face, painted nails, blue-black pile of hair, Madonna face, perched on a high stool in the lounge bar of the Greyhound Hotel, they thought she looked sad. But Martha was not ever sad, unless being bored is a form of sadness. She wanted two things from life and she got them – drink and admiration.

The contrasting mothers also point to one of the great dichotomies of the Irish culture: Christian Puritanism at one extreme, and sexual sleaze at the other. The protagonist is pulled in both directions, symbolised by the claustrophobically restrictive environment of the convent and the gaudy night life of Dublin respectively.

Baba is the classic example of a toxic personality. Not having even one-tenth of the personal capabilities of her friend, she enjoys in putting her friend down at all possible occasions, playing on her inferiority complex of being poor. Yet Caithleen cannot break free of her: as Baba’s father says, she has always been her ‘tool’. But reality is much more nuanced, of course – Baba is the unreachable ideal of glamour Caithleen aspires to: at the same time, she can sense the vulnerability in her, which makes the relationship a mutually essential (albeit negative) one. For when it ends on a semi-tragic note, it’s a rite of passage for her.

I waved to the car and she waved back. Her thin white fingers behind the glass waved to the end of our friendship. She was gone. It would never be the same again, even if we tried.

The second rite of passage for the protagonist concerns her relationship with a middle-aged dandy we can immediately identify as a Casanova and a possible paedophile, ironically called ‘Mr. Gentleman’ by all and sundry. This blackguard is a Frenchman settled in Ireland, who by the dint of his affluence and gentlemanly behaviour holds the society in thrall – and for Caithleen, he is another mirage which she thirsts after. And when this too collapses, the heroine has passed her final threshold, from girlhood to womanhood.

***

After I read this novel, I did some research on the author. It seems that this is her first novel, and semi-autobiographical in nature. It was considered scandalous at the time it was published (1960) for its sexual explicitness, and there were public book burnings authorised by the Catholic clergy! The author and her family were ostracised by the Church and society, which resulted in Edna moving out of Ireland. Bully for her! It seems she was one of the very early feminists.

[Mark Porton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh yeah it was alright.

The good thing about this story was the writing, it was so, so good - easy and nice to read. A bit like Wendell Berry in some ways.

But, for me. This reader. I just didn't like the story. I did at the beginning, but this piece about a young Irish girl and her friends and anti-friends was something I found a bit tedious the more it progressed.

Girls, growing up, having crushes on men and bickering. Not for me.

3 Stars

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a re-read, so for me the interesting element of reading it this time round were the changes in my perspective. I first read 'The Country Girls' when I was in school probably around 14, the same age as our narrator Caithleen/Cait. And I re-read the three-part trilogy maybe 10 years ago when I found a second-hand copy, and then I re-read volume three - 'Girls in Their Married Bliss', because I found an edition with the epilogue, which I believe was not part of the original third book. I remember being deeply saddened by the third part, and there is possibly a continuation of Cait's story in 'Time and Tide', published in 1990. The story features Nell, a girl with green eyes, who makes her way to London, following an acrimonious divorce and settles there with her two young sons.

Anyway, what struck me in this reading was that I remembered particular scenes in connection with how I had felt, in other words a strong emotional response in my earlier reading brought the details back very quickly, but in this reading my response was quite different. For example, in the chapters where Baba is intent on getting herself and Cait expelled from the convent, I clearly remembered Cait's anxiety about the punishments they would receive, and the reactions of the other girls and nuns, who scorned them as they were leaving, refusing to even look at them. I also felt the danger of rebelling in this way against the authority of the nuns - the humiliation Cait would feel in being judged. Baba is way too thick-skinned to care too much and she's not an 'A' student like Cait - that was my previous reaction.

In this reading, however, I just thought - yes! The stupidity, the backwardness of this type of religious upbringing, and the rigid, inflexible rules and conformative behaviour demanded by the nuns deserved exactly this type of rebellion. I felt like Baba, only I'm now 55 years old reading this and feeling the same intense dislike that Baba shows. I really feel now that the nuns, the convent, the whole religious order and beyond, got exactly what it deserved: Baba's defiant rejection. It's an interesting story for me, because my mother was sent to a convent where she was 'educated' by nuns. I can't help thinking that the pious and sanctimonious rules of the Catholic religion must have affected my mother's upbringing - and has probably to some extent informed my character also.

To return to the book. I suspect O'Brien's characters of Baba and Cait are in fact expressions of herself despite their clear differences. Cait is the calm exterior; but O'Brien's thoughts are seen in the rebellious, outspoken, gutsy Baba, who does what she wants. O'Brien's first book is written with the intent to expose the extremely narrow teachings of the Church especially in relation to 'boys, sex and things' as Cait puts it. And more generally the restrictive morals imposed on women in sexual relationships.

When I read the story at 14, I was barely aware of the instructive side to O'Brien's writing, I simply loved all the gossipy, juicy details of the girls' experiences, in the convent and then later when they arrive in Dublin. Poor Cait, although she has a scholarship and could have completed her secondary education, she chooses to go with Baba to Dublin and works in a grocery shop. Baba's family have money, and they can afford to send her to college, although it's doubtful if Baba actually attended any lectures.

The story ends with Cait waiting for Mr Gentleman to whisk her away on a romantic holiday to Vienna, but predictably, he is still firmly married.

The copyright in my Penguin edition says 1960. O'Brien was born in 1930, so I am guessing that she wrote 'The Country Girls' in retrospect from the age of 30 looking back at her earlier life. The trilogy is highly autobiographical, but its importance is in the outspoken nature of the girls' attitude to their experiences of growing up in Ireland. All three books were banned as they were published in 1960, 1962 and 1964; banned that is by the Irish Censorship Board. As Wikipedia states, however: "The Country Girls, both trilogy and the novel, is often credited with breaking silence on sexual matters and social issues during a repressive period in Ireland following World War II . . ."

The three novels were re-released in 1986 in a single volume. Although we now have access to all of her books, it must have hurt O'Brien in her writing career and caused great personal distress to be blocked with her first three books. I can only say, make sure you read this - it's a classic of 20th century literature.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Country Girls is the first installment in the Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O’Brien. As is typical with trilogies, this novel would feel somewhat incomplete if the ending were the actual end of the story. As it is, this first installment was captivating and I picked up the second immediately and began the continuation of the story.

Set in 1950’s Ireland, we meet Caithleen Brady and Baba Brennan, two 14 year olds setting out to explore the world. We follow them through a couple of early traumas, convent boarding school, and into a life alone in the big city of Dublin. Baba is a very racy young lady, who seems often to invite trouble; Caith is a naive girl who is easy prey for the charming, and callous, Mr. Gentleman.

The character of Mr. Gentleman is a particularly stunning study of the mores and class divides of the time and the manner in which women are judged for sexuality vs. men. He is a wealthy married man, and his inappropriate attention to such a young girl made my skin crawl, but at the same time I understood the allure he would have had for a girl of much lower standing, who wants for both appropriate affection and material security. What I found particularly interesting were the reactions of other adults to Mr. Gentleman, and the way in which no one questioned his behavior from the beginning.

I can imagine Edna O’Brien was pretty shocking to the Ireland of her time. The picture she draws seems starkly realistic to me and exposes the repressed attitudes of the church for the ineffective and often harmful stance they took on young women’s sexual feelings. In fact, the lack of understanding of these girls as young women with curiosity and desires seems almost to push them toward a dangerous path.

O’Brien’s writing is fluid and precise. The story flows effortlessly and the characters stir exactly the emotions I believe O’Brien wishes her readers to feel. I am looking forward to the rest of the story, and hoping Caith, and even the very difficult to like, Baba, will become wiser as they mature.

[Jan-Maat]

There is a book called no country for old men. Enda O'Brien's trilogy (the country girls (1960), the lonely girl(1962), girls in their married bliss (1964), & an Epilogue published in 1987) is set in no country for young women, or possibly countries, first Ireland, then London, and really they are not just no countries for young women but no countries for women, unless in the case of Ireland they wear a wimple, carry rosaries, and have taken holy orders.

The series is at face value the picaresque adventures of two girls - about 14 at the start of the story; caitleen who over the course of the novels is made into Kate, and Baba (Bridget). They are not exactly friends, by the end I might say they are mutually dependant and mostly in the books friendly towards each other. They escape from the frying pan into the fire repeatedly which I appreciate is a difficult thing to do, and possibly hardly to the brain to try and visualise without assistance by Escher, just imagine that I am competing for the prize of producing the worst metaphor on goodreads, if that helps with a sound like the jolly pop of a champagne cork from the bottle, from their childhood countryside homes, possibly in County Clare, anyhow close to the river Shannon where cait's mother will end up and to Limerick where Cait's father goes if he's got enough cash to really go to town where the men are drunk and violent, or aged and lecherous, the women are martyrs or quiet rebels boozing with travelling salesmen regarding the husband as a soldier of an occupying power to be detested, where teeth are brown or green or missing. Any road , pop, they escape from there to a convent school, which is not a prison, because in prison there is the possibility of early release on parole or even appealing against your sentence, but, pop, cleverly they managed to escape to the bright lights of Dublin. Here they try to have fun but eventually, pop, they really need to escape to London. Doctor Johnson observed that the man who is tired of London, is tired of life; so plainly there's no way out, save in a box, from London. Now in their early twenties they have to buckle down and accept their lives of married bliss, irony very much intended. Eventually I remembered that an Irishman observed that all women become like their mothers which is their tragedy while no man does, and that is his; unconsciously the young women have been working very hard all the while to repeat the patterns of their mothers' lives even while literally running ok, taking trains, boats and automobiles away from them. And reader, I saw a tragedy, in three acts.

Both Cait and Baba remain naive throughout, Baba's nativity is flavoured with a very funny cynicism ( I know its an likely combination but I dont know how else to describe it though you might with reason say that cynicism is naive ) while Cait' s nativity is of the dreamy and romantic kind, she reads and remember books, but none of them help her escape the pattern of her life. Perhaps they are part of the problem. My point of comparison is with the atom station which is the story of a country girl making her way in the big city (well, ok, Reykjavik) and having love affairs, possibly with inappropriate men. She is also pious - as Cait remains, despite Convent school, -but practical,sturdy and self posed, ignorant but not naive. The politics in is as the title implies explicit, Cait and Baba maybe can never be Political because they are relatively privileged, solidarity even with each other, let alone all other women, would require recognising their relative power in the class structure for all that, the need for Feminism is the unspoken subtext of the trilogy: the central scene of the trilogy is the fight between Cait' s awful father and her awful lover as to which of them is going to possess her.

The second volume is Gothic with Cait settlingly in to a smaller, but dustier, Mandalay somewhere outside of Dublin with a somewhat Mr de Winter / Mr Rochester / Bluebeard like man and his Mrs Danvers impersonating servant. The attraction of the man to her is that he looks sepulchrial, and reader, she marries him, that night she dreams of being entombed in a living death, and the nice thing about dreams like that is that they can come true. The husband is a toned down version of O'Brien's own husband, Baba says that he'd tell you how to breathe (certainly in the book we see him tell Cait how to do pretty much everything else and he calls her fat into the bargain, since obviously he's young love's dream & in the end I think we can see that he too is dependant on Cait .

The third volume splits the narrative between Baba and Cait who has thought herself into Kate by this stage, the tone is modern even though Baba tries to live like a lady out of the decameron, mind you her husband, an Irish builder worth a million or two, who dreams of returning to the furthest West of Ireland much to Baba's horror - the kind of man who insures that any of his workers who happen to have heard of Labour rights fall off scaffolds- is trying to live as though the year 1400 is still in the future, so why not?

I became interested in reading the trilogy a couple of years ago, my interest was sharpened by a couple of newspaper articles, one about the parties that O'Brien hosted in London (Harold Wilson was a guest, which shocked me - a British Prime Minister attending an author's party!) after her divorce, another about her ex-husband and how he would write dismissive commentaries beneath her diary entries among other acts of charm and affection. Then I read the lesser bohemians, and I'd say that Eimear McBride is reworking aspects from the Country girls trilogy in that, and a girl is a half formed thing. McBride wrote the forward to the edition that I read in which she more or less confesses to that. Luckily I was kindly given the trilogy as a Christmas present, now I glumly think that maybe I have frightened you off from reading it, but it is funny, and engaging, literary - you could play spot the book references all day I think, and it's full of drink as well as making fun of how Dubliners speak, and the fear that the person with the money might get up and have to leave the restaurant before the bill has been paid.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ernest Hemingway once said "Write the truest sentence you know." I think Edna O'Brien writes the truest story she knows in her debut novel, The Country Girls. With simple yet evocative prose, she tells of girls and women in this place and time, Ireland in the 1950's. She gets into the heart and mind of Cait, ages 14 through 18, and shows her ploughing through her restrictive Catholic small town upbringing.

O'Brien brings to life the acceptance: of husbands who drink and beat their wives, of men who think receiving kisses from 14 year-old girls at every opportunity is their due, of low expectations of the intelligence and capabilities of women, that talking about sex and sexual matters is taboo, and that sexual urges in young (and for that matter older) women are non-existent.

O'Brien puts me in the village and I experience life alongside Cait. She is bright, a romantic, and appreciates any kindness she receives. She and her mother are especially close, partially due to her abusive father, and she is grief-stricken by her mother's death. Cait develops a crush on a sophisticated older man in the village, Mr. Gentleman, a Frenchman who appears to be everything that she has lacked in her life. And he pursues this advantage.

Cait and Baba, same age frenemies and very different personalities, nevertheless are united in their desire to escape the normalized subjugation of women and to spread their wings and experience life. After being expelled from a convent school they eventually head to Dublin, Baba to secretarial school and Cait to work for a grocer, "giddy country girls braving the big city."

This work resonates with women today because it is still relevant. Though twenty years later and in the U.S., I was raised in a strict Catholic household. I was lucky to have an aunt who made sure I knew about my body and how it worked and about appropriate and loving sexual relationships. She made sure that I knew it was right to use the word NO! and showed me what to do if necessary. My father, also wary of men, made sure most of my outings were in the company of one or the other of my intimidating looking male cousins. My girl cousins learned this information from me, not their mothers or doctors, and definitely not in Catholic school. And you can be sure our daughters were as prepared to move through this world as safely as possible.

The playing field is still far from level for women in all walks of life. We women are still walking in the shoes of these young women.

While there is a lot of unhappiness, their are moments of wit and humor, just as in real life, which lighten their loads (and mine).

I am eager to see what lies ahead for Cait and Baba and have begun reading the second book in this trilogy.

Buddy read with Julie. Read her review.

Publication 1960

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's exciting reading such an influential book for the first time, but it's also a curious experience since radical elements of the story can already feel familiar. I've read a good amount of recent Irish fiction. So a novel about an Irish girl coming of age, experiencing the oppressive forces of the patriarchy/conservative religion, moving from the country to an independent life in the city and engaging in a romantic relationship with an older man doesn't feel that revolutionary now. But, at the time of its initial publication in 1960, the story presented in “The Country Girls” stirred a lot of controversy as it was condemned by some politicians and religious leaders who even went to the extreme of burning copies of the book.

I can only admire how Edna O'Brien broke boundaries at the time to represent young female experience in her protagonist of Caithleen “Cait” Brady. It's arrestingly portrayed how she must live with a father prone to violent alcohol-fuelled outbursts and amongst a community of men who expect kisses (or more) in exchange for favours. Though her academic prowess earns her a promising scholarship to a convent school she discovers she must contend with mean-spirited nuns and stomach-turning meals (stringy meat and sodden cabbage). Caithleen also develops a romantic infatuation with a figure nicknamed Mr. Gentleman who is married and grooms her for a future affair from the age of fourteen. Together with her longtime friend (frenemy) Bridget “Baba” she moves to Dublin to live for the first time as independent young women. These experiences are vividly conveyed throughly sharply-rendered details and emotional descriptions. So, even if such a storyline may no longer feel entirely new, it remains an utterly captivating tale that's brilliantly written.

Read my full review of The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien at LonesomeReader

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first, I didn't think very much of The Country Girls. It's sort of your standard coming of age story, the locus here being female and Irish and from a rural, rather down-at-hell background.

O'Brien, who admittedly wrote under the inspiration of Dubliners, said herself that the novel came almost as if unbidden. She said something to the effect that her hand wrote it, she just guided the pen. Very interesting not only to hear this, which has to indicate something really important and personal and special about the writing of this book, what it means for her, but also how this was motivated by her *finally* leaving the old sow that eats her farrow and being excited, happy, full, just having GOTTEN OUT. You'd think if you read Joyce that this was more about Romantic urgins and the whims of innovative geniuses but evidently the desire to escape the smothering, swarthy, pious, repressive, and physically looming presence of the emerald isle isn't limited to emotional neurotics with poetic dreams.

It's interesting to see how the main character, Cait, comes into her own slowly but surely. O'Brien's sentences are brief (I read the thing in a day) and cut to the quick, yet contain enough suppleness to move what builds into a pretty dramatic story. It's the first of a trilogy and my teacher warned us that once we've finished it we would be itching to see what happens next. It's true. It's somewhat of a cliffhanger, and a bit of a scary, somewhat creepy one at that.

Throughout the story you get Cait and her best frenemy Baba interacting through adolescence the way any couple of (pre) teenagers do, with not much to recommend home and grisly, three-toothed creepers just waiting for the right time to make a proposal you can't refuse. And the scholarships are rare but, if won, they bring you to a convent which is like something out of Jane Eyre, if not Dickens or some of Orwell's reminiscience of his school days. And then, of course, you've got to flee again.

As you read it you really are made aware of the growing self-awareness of the characters, in this case predominantly female, as they come to see their country (De Valera's sentimental, domestic, rural, humble, stifling Irish wholesomeness) their families (drunk dads, cows pissing in the fields, burly good natured idiot farmhands, aforementioned pervy neighbors with too much time on their hands and too little to do that isn't pissing off to the pubs, growling at livestock, and bemoaning the vicissitudes of fate) and their bodies (a little too skinny, wine is bitter, what tortures women inflict on each other, particularly when there isn't much of anyone else to talk to! Baba I enjoyed reading about but would NOT like to meet in person- sex and the single girl is all fine with me, but the kind of spiteful jealousy and emotional taunting which goes on is not my ball of wax- much less Cait's).

The lights of Dublin are bright, quicksilver, people going places in hurried, expensive groups...there are always a couple of middle aged swells ready to pick up where the pervy uncles and opportunistic neighbors left off.

Sometimes when people relate the bare, unadorned facts of their lives in mediums not unto life itself, it's a small miracle that they seem to have survived at all. O'Brien writes with a brisk, observant frankness which renders the rather drab circumstances of her Cait's life into something engaging, engrossing, energetic, and vivid.

[Fuchsia Groan · Rating 3 out of 5]

La publicación de la primera novela de esta trilogía, Las chicas de campo, supuso una conmoción en la sociedad irlandesa de comienzos de los años 60, hasta el punto de que el párroco de Tuamgraney, localidad de origen de la autora, consiguió tres de los cuatro ejemplares que se pusieron a la venta en Irlanda y los quemó en público.

Este hecho sin duda suscitará la curiosidad de la mayoría, pero el que espere una historia escandalosa se sentirá decepcionado. Y esa decepción sin duda dice mucho de la mentalidad de la época y la misoginia imperante en aquella sociedad ultraconservadora: al final, lo escandaloso era el reconocimiento de las ansias de libertad e independencia, de la sexualidad de las protagonistas, y no tanto otros hechos que se narran que sí son abominables.

En la primera novela conoceremos a Caithleen y a Baba, dos niñas al comenzar el libro, habitantes de una pequeña localidad rural en la Irlanda de los años 50. Compañeras de colegio, pudiera parecer que no tienen más que eso en común: Caithleen Brady es dependiente y temerosa, ama a su madre y se aferra a ella con temor, pero la pierde siendo aún niña, quedando desamparada junto a un padre alcohólico y violento. Baba Brennan es rebelde, dominante y decidida, y proviene de una familia acomodada. Ambas forjan una amistad maravillosamente descrita, compleja y real, de dependencia por parte de ambas, de amor y rechazo, siendo a la vez enemigas y aliadas.

Este primer libro es mi preferido de los tres, tanto por esos primeros pasos hacia una amistad memorable y la manera en que refleja el paso de la infancia a la adolescencia de las dos protagonistas, como por los personajes secundarios, todos perfectamente retratados, y la oprimente atmósfera religiosa, claustrofóbica, y de la que es realmente complicado escapar, pero que describe con ternura, humor incluso, sin quitarle por ello todo el horror que supone.

En La chica de ojos verdes asistimos al viaje hacia la madurez, el paso a la vida adulta, la independencia que consiguen al mudarse juntas a Dublín, las primeras relaciones, las fiestas y sus sueños, el descubrimiento de un mundo radicalmente distinto. Creo que en este segundo volumen se pierde algo del encanto.

Finalmente, en Chicas felizmente casadas, vemos ya a las protagonistas en su vida adulta, con sus sueños cumplidos (aunque, quizás, no de la manera soñada), en un cierre realista, con satisfacciones y amarguras, alegrías y desilusiones, a veces resultado de malas elecciones, que me ha supuesto un pequeño puñetazo en el estómago. Pese a que esos puñetazos suelen ser buena señal, es el volumen que menos me ha gustado. Confieso que no sé explicar del todo las razones, los cambios en la voz narradora no me han gustado, y quizás los hechos me han hecho algo de daño y me niego a admitir que yo, en contra de todos mis principios, deseaba un final algo más edulcorado.

Con todo, Las chicas de campo es una trilogía sumamente recomendable, sencilla y auténtica, que refleja de maravilla la sociedad irlandesa de la época, sociedad que Edna O’Brien sufrió en sus propias carnes, dejando reflejadas sus propias vivencias en estas páginas (de hecho, el título de su autobiografía es Chica de campo).

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have absolutely no idea how to rate this book. Can I say that I enjoyed it? Yes and no. Can I say that I appreciated it? Yes indeed.

It was an important book for its time—published in 1960 and showing an Ireland that doesn’t exist anymore. One where the Catholic Church and patriarchy reigned supreme and women had extremely limited choices. You could get married or become a nun. That was pretty much it, at least for the country girls. Women weren’t admitted to be sexual beings and weren’t supposed to criticize how their society worked.

Edna O’Brien writes beautifully about the naiveté of the two rural girls when they come to the big city. Kate is the artistic, romantic, intellectual girl who has idealistic visions of what life should be like. She wants to discuss literature with her dates and they only value her sexuality. She becomes involved with an older married man from her village because he offers a window into the more sophisticated world that Kate longs for. Baba, on the other hand, is far more earthy—she wants to smoke, drink, and enjoy the company of men. The two women couldn’t be more different from one another, but small communities make for strange friendships. With few people of the right age to choose from, you bond with the most compatible person available and these relationships rarely withstand leaving home.

The poverty, the alcohol problems, the repression of women--The Country Girls reveals them all. No wonder this book was denounced and banned. It was hanging out the dirty linen for the world to look at.

Ireland is a country that is definitely on my “to visit” list. I love reading books which are set there and I will definitely read more of O’Brien’s work.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There were birds singing in the convent trees as we crossed the tarmac driveway to the chapel. The birds reminded us both of the same thing. Home wasn’t such a bad place, after all.”

This story, set in 1950’s rural Ireland, tells of friendship and family, of Catholic repression and developing sexuality. I liked it so much, and can give three reasons why.

First, the character of Caithleen. She is compelling, initially for her awkwardness, then for the tragedies that befall her, but mostly because her personality is developing and we get to see that happen.

Next, for the depiction of life in Ireland for those of humble means. It’s a way of life similar to what I remember hearing about from my parents when talking of their childhoods in the American Midwest. They told of simple pleasures amid the back-breaking work of farming and the constant worrying about survival and whether you “would be able to keep the place.” They told how some people carried all the weight on their shoulders, while others, the ne’er-do-wells, “brought shame on the family name.” Oh, and there was the other category of folks, the ones who “got out,” who dressed up one day in their Sunday best and went off to the city and never came back. These are such familiar stories to me, of a time that was so different than the time we live in now, and I loved revisiting them in The Country Girls.

Last and most important, I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style. Short, simple sentences describing just what you need to know to carry the story forward, and no more. Yet the details included! Each situation we meet with Caithleen is brought to life by evocative descriptions like this that put you right in the scene:

“The windows of the drapery shops were dressed for Christmas with holly and Christmas stockings and shreds of tinsel. I couldn’t see them very well with my flashlight but inside in the shops there were countrywomen buying boots and vests and calico. I looked in the doorway of O’Brien’s drapery and saw Mrs. O’Brien, under the lamplight, measuring curtain material. There was a country man sitting on a chair fitting on a pair of boots, and his wife was feeling the leather with her hands and searching to see if his toe came to the very tip of the boot.”

The Country Girls is the first of a trilogy, and while you could say her girlhood ends in this one, I will definitely read on to the next chapters in Caithleen’s path to maturity.

[Wilhelmina Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this trilogy was an interesting experience for me because I read the first two books, The Country Girls and The Lonely Girl, as a teenager back in the '60s. In my opinion, those two books held up very well. Kate and Baba are best friends, although Baba frequently treats Kate, the more scholarly and sensitive girl, quite unkindly. Ultimately, the girls, later women, are the constant factor in each other's lives. Searching for a life beyond their restrictive small town life and convent school, they escape to Dublin and seek happiness in their relationships with men.

By the third book, Girls in their Married Bliss, they are attempting to live with their poor choices and deal with the unhappy consequences. This book, in my opinion, is the least successful of the three. If I had read the third book as a stand-alone, I do not think that I would have enjoyed it at all. Sandwiched between Lonely Girl and the epilogue, however, it adds to the understanding of these women and the difficult lives they have chosen. I found the Epilogue to be touching and heartbreaking. I would recommend reading these books all of the way through the epilogue to obtain the complete picture that O'Brien presents of the intertwined lives of these women.

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Edna O'Brien's writing, lyrical is the perfect word to describe it. Good dialogs. Her characters become distinct.

The plot left me cold. Totally boring. Not only do you need good writing you need an interesting story for a novel to work. We follow two girls, Caithleen and Baba, 14 years of age when the book opens. Two country girls, as the title so aptly indicates. The setting is western Ireland, outside Limerick, the 1960s. This is a coming of age story, about friendship and blossoming interest in the opposite sex. The two girls leave home, go to a horrible convent, escape and move to Dublin. I just cannot make this sound more interesting than it was. Their friendship is conflicted; they both depend on each other and quarrel.

The only part of the plot I enjoyed was the beginning. There is the classic Irish problem of a father that drinks. I felt Caithleen's fear of her father. This was palpable and really well written. On the other hand I didn't understand her strong devotion toward her mother. I don’t even think the friendship between the girls was that well portrayed.

The author narrates her own book. I did feel the emotions she wanted to portray, but the whole feel is dreary, tragic and despondent. This doesn't fit the lines. The dialogs were a little bit better. No, the narration is not good.

I will not be continuing the trilogy.

[Yulia · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a roller coaster this put me on. While reading it, I was sincerely frightened for the characters and for my own fate in life, I pounded the pillow in helpless distress and needed to be comforted by Frank that, if it made me feel so much, she must be doing something right. But it was agony, not beautiful agony, but masochistic, call-your-therapist agony. The pain it induced was more than I'd bargained for. As I approached the end, I thought, this is a work I want to own, to add to my colection while is already filled in terms of shelf space. This is a book I can't forget and don't want to, like a tragic ending to the closest friendship of my life. And just an hour after finishing it, it felt as if a pillowcase that had been blinding me had been lifted. IO saw everything more clearly. How could O'Brien put me through such pain? Did she realize there was not one sympathetic male character in her entire trilogy (excepting Snowie perhaps)? Did she want women to call of romance and seek only the comfort of female friendships? Was life truly such a lost cause? Was there nothing to be gained or learned from our experiences? And now I'm left feeling deceived by her, as if I'd been caught up in a man-hating cult of abandoned women who still craved their drug.

This book was torture, good torture, then cruel torture, then unnecessary torture. I want my grounding on reality back. May no single woman in search of true companionship read this book. May no woman in a failing relationship read this, either. May no man waste his time on it. No, this book didn't end up a failure. It was sentimental, but saved by its humor, and deeply moving as only a roller coaster that has been derailed can move you.

Looking back on this destabilizing half-week experience in which I could do nothing but read this book or worry about reading on, for fear I would be further traumatized, I remember now who it was whore assured me as I cried in hopelessness or went into a panic. Yes, it was my partner, a concept that O'Brien's characters cannot fathom in this chronicle. What I'm left with is a love-hate relationship. I hate this book for torturing me as it did, but I love it for invoking such strong feelings. Thank goodness there is life outside this trilogy. If this were an accurate portrayal of human relations, I think I'd kill myself.

But my fault was in over-identifying with the literate and romantic Caithleen, even as she proceeds to lose her grip on reality. Warning: these characters are extremes. I wouldn't identify too closely with any if I could avoid it. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at dividing the literary world from the literal world.

Good luck to readers and have a supportive partner or an excellent therapist should you choose to read this. I regret recommending it to my mother.

Some lines I wanted to remember, for one reason or another (no use questioning their profundity):

"He was only a shadow now, and I remembered him the way one remembers a nice dress that one has grown out of" (p. 179, not this edition)

"I used to think of my life as a failure, purposeless . . . until I got older and became aware of things. I now know that the problem of life is not solved by success but by failure: struggle and achievement and failure, on and on" (p. 220).

"He directed documentary pictures but was always buying leisure, as if in the course of leisure he must found what he had been ordained to do" (p. 391).

"'Baba, why did you do it to me?' he said. Useless to say that I hadn't thought of him when I was doing it. Useless to say that I always thought your acquaintanceship with one person had nothing to do with another" (p. 471).

"She closed her eyes on the thought that sleeping with a man was unimportant. A nothing, if nothing in the way of love preceded it. Or resulted from it" (p. 500).

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly don’t know what to say about this trilogy. I’m not even sure how I felt about it, really. I can’t say I loved these books, no; I didn’t love them. None of the characters were lovable, not even the main characters Baba and Caithleen. Yet I couldn’t help but care what happened to them. Even as I watched their lives spiral downwards, them make decision upon bad decision; nothing could’ve induced me to stop reading. It wasn’t like being unable to look away from a train wreck yet I suppose it kind of was. (I’m not making any sense, I know.)

The middle book, The Lonely Girl, was my favourite. The last book, Girls in their Married Bliss, was my least favourite, being the most painful to read. I can just imagine Edna O’Brien choosing that title with an ironic, bitter twist to her smile.
The Epilogue was, in my opinion, completely unnecessary and I would’ve been happier without it. Especially since, though it was only 20 pages long, it contained 10 times the amount of expletives as the other 510 pages. I wish I was kidding.

I don’t know why I was so drawn to these books! Looking back, I wonder why I didn’t hate them. As I said before, none of the characters were lovable. There was not a single good relationship in this book, not even in the strange friendship between Baba and Caithleen.
The prose didn’t strike me as being particularly exceptional. Perhaps it was, though. At least, Edna O’Brien did a lovely job conjuring up the setting. Actually, I can see several scenes in my head as if I had just finished watching a film of it.
There was something so oddly affecting about these books. Not touching, exactly. More distressing than anything. And even with the ache of these books fresh in my mind, I know I will be re-reading them someday in the future.

[Kuszma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ezeket a semmi kis történeteket nehéz ám megírni. Hisz mi ez? Búcsú leányságomtól – egy kis ír bagatell. Itt van Caithleen, aki a kelta falusi bukolikából eljut Dublinig, aztán ennyi. Nem számítsunk szédítő karrierre: amikor elbúcsúzunk tőle, eladólányként ügyeskedik valami incifinci boltocskában. Közben persze történik egy és más, amit a regényelmélet „konfliktusnak” nevez.Van például erőszakos, alkoholista apa, meg egy olyan barátnő, aki ellenségnek is kiválóan megfelelne, ja, és persze némi szerelem. Nyiladozik a libidó, na. De igazából semmi olyan, amire felkapná az ember a fejét – egy élet, ennyi az egész. Nem könnyű élet, de csupán élet. Az ilyen történeteket csak úgy lehet eladni, ha különösen jól vannak megírva. O'Briannek sikerül. Érzékeny prózája botlás nélkül lavíroz a hangulatok között: a vidéki odőrt ugyanolyan átélhetőn ragadja meg, mint a zárdák arktiszi hidegét, egy barátság ambivalenciáját épp olyan finoman teszi papírra, mint a nővé érés sokszínű bizonytalanságait. Szeretem az ilyen szép, tiszta, szívvel és ésszel megteremtett tereket.

[Vanessa Wu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been listening to Edna O'Brien read the unabridged version of this novel. It is quite short. She reads it in a state of holy awe, as if she is filled with wonder at the world. This very much suits the narrative, which tells of the unholy dramas that befall a fourteen-year-old Catholic girl in a little Irish town. It is told in unadorned, elegant English. There is a purity about it, which means you have to quieten your mind and let Edna's voice fill up your senses in order to appreciate it. You will then realise that it is a life-changing experience to ride in a car with a well-groomed man of middle age who thinks you are lovely; and that lifelong friendship can begin with the gift of a cake placed on your pillow. If you expect any more from life, or a book, than this, then you may well be disappointed. But if you enjoy the purity of simple language that caresses your ears and sharpens your senses, then prepare to be enthralled.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOTA FINAL: 4'5/5

Creo que si algo caracteriza a Las chicas de campo es su sencillez y singularidad. Y casi diría que es una novela entrañable. Entrañable (a pesar de algún que otro momento tirando a crudo), melancólica por momentos... Es una novela que hay que leer poniéndose en todo momento (y sí o sí) en la piel de las protagonistas: Caithleen y Baba (demasiado fan soy yo de este personaje). ¿Por qué? Pues para hacerse una idea de la sociedad irlandesa de los años 50. Pues digamos que hoy en día algunos detalles (muy conservadores) que nos presenta Edna O'Brien no causan ese "escándalo" que podrían haber causado (y causaron) por aquel entonces. Y en verdad, no quiero decir mucho acerca de este libro. Creo que es una de esas historias que hay que ir descubriendo por uno mismo. (?) Cuanto menos sepas (siempre bajo mi punto de vista, claro) de ella, mejor. En lo que a mí respecta diré que me he enamorado perdidamente del retrato tan maravilloso que hace Edna de esa Irlanda rural y de esas noches dublinesas. Y bueno. A partir de aquí empieza mi andadura con esta fabulosa escritora.

Fuimos hacia el reino de las hadas de neón que era Dublín.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three books and a short epilogue telling the sorry tale of two girls growing up as friends in theocratic rural Ireland, probably in the mid-1960's. Of course, religious belief played a big role in their misfortunes, messing up their decision making skills as adults. Still, it was hard to feel sympathy for any of them. Nevertheless, a very good en engrossing read that won't be easy to forget.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Country Girls

Childhood in the west Irish countryside, early adulthood in a boarding house in Dublin, marriage in London; the three books follow the lives of two girls Caithleen (Kate) and Bridget (Baba),who were neighbours and school friends and room mates. Though not people who had much in common, except their shared history, without that, their lives might have been much worse.

She had been nice to me for several weeks since Mama died, but when there were other girls around she always made little of me.

Caitheen loses her mother early on, a drowning accident and spends time at her friend Baba's house, due to the drunken binges her father goes on, his erratic behaviour causing them to lose their home.

I was never safe in my thoughts,because when I thought of things I was afraid.So I visited people every day, and not once did I go over the road to look at our own house.

A scholarship helps her to get an education, but Baba's idea to get them expelled, cuts short any opportunity Kate may have had to rise above the shop girl she will become.

Baba's home life had been more carefree, her father is the local vet, her mother laid back, she yearned not for much and was used to home comforts. She could be unkind and had little empathy for others, she happily insulted her friend, was shallow, less intelligent and avoided trouble unless using it for a specific outcome. She wanted to have fun, be entertained, free of consequence.

Dublin initially gives them freedom and excitement, a neon fairyland, it promises much to look forward to.

Forever more I would be restless for crowds and lights and noise. I had gone from sad noises, the lonely rain pelting on the galvanized roof of the chicken house; the moans of a cow in the night, when her calf was being born under a tree.

The first book is their coming-of-age, into this atmosphere of loss arrives one overly friendly neighbour Mr Gentleman, a married man who inappropriately eyes up the vulnerable young Caithleen, offering her a ride into the town, buying her lunch, indulging her with experiences that makeup for the loss and lack of love she feels, not realising she is prey, only knowing how the attention makes her feel. It is the beginning of a pattern of disappointments concerning men in her life.

The Lonely Girl
Caithleen meets Eugene,something about him (half foreign, older man) reminds her of Mr Gentleman, whom she hasn't seen for 2 years. The girls now live in Joanna and Gustav's boarding house and become a little like family in this house, sometimes confiding in Joanna, who struggles to maintain rules and boundaries with the girls.

For once I was not lonely, because I was with someone I wanted to be with.

They have one rough friend Body, who is one of the few they can rely on to escort them to dances. Neither of them are in relationships, but Caithleen yearns for the enigmatic Eugene. News of him travels to her father after he receives an anonymous letter.

One sadness recalls another: I stood there beside the new, crumpled coat and remembered the night my mother was drowned and how I clung to the foolish hope that it was all a mistake and that she would walk into the room, asking people why they mourned her. I prayed that he would not be married.

He brings her home and she is forced to have an audience with the bishop - a divorced man is deemed worse than a murderer and all kinds of terrible things are said to be going to befall her in the afterlife.

"Divorce is worse than murder," my aunt had always said- I would never forget it; that and their staring disapproval.

Running towards Eugene brings out all her insecurities and yearnings, her lack of purpose. His age, his independence, career, worldliness, his friends - all are far from her reality. She finds some kind of comfort in his detached way of caring for her. In her immaturity, she desires to be pursued by him, as if to prove his love. It backfires, she will again feel the wound of abandonment, having acted out its consequence, the clingy holding on, the fear of disconnection and imagining potential threats to their relationship and the leaving while wishing to be pursued, only to re-experience the rejection inherent in that abandonment.

Baba tells Caithleen she is leaving for London, Baba has always been loved, but she does not use this strength to foster good in her relationships. She exhibits an emotional superiority that has inflated her self-esteem, despite her lower intelligence. Easily bored she entertains herself through extrovert behaviour and belittling others, she is decisive because she rarely compromises.

Girls in Their Married Bliss
Again time passes, so that when we encounter the girls, they are on the cusp of marriage, Kate will marry the one who abandoned her and Baba, a man who can provide for her in the manner she has desires. One desires love, the other security. Sadly, there's not much in the way of bliss.

The third book has a different feel as it is the only one narrated by Baba, so there is more of distance from Kate, who we view in the third person.

She had plans for them both to leave their husbands one day when they'd accumulated furs and diamonds, just as once she had planned that they would meet and marry rich men and livein houses with bottle of grog opened, and unopened, on silver trays.

The girls drift away from each other and then come back as their lives hit various ups and downs. To some extent Kate is fulfilled by her son, but the disintegration of the relationship with her husband sets up more loss and abandonment in her life.

These are novels written in 1960's that hold nothing back, they explore the psychological depths of these two young women who grew up in a conservative Ireland, with its social problems and moral expectations, which little equipped young women pushed from the nest into the world of destructive vice and little virtue.

She said it was the emptiness that was the worst, the void.