Also she oftentimes remembers her son and whenever she does, she loses interest on the man who is raring to go to bed with her.

The central character is so lost, that you ache for her while at the same time you'd like to slap her and tell her to get over it (though I can't honestly say my choices would have been any different). Edna O’Brien’s fourth novel, August is a Wicked Month, was first published in 1965 and subsequently banned by the Irish censors for the story’s sexual candour. Her husband and son would not be back for a week or more and she would lie in a strange new place and let strange new things happen to her. A brilliant and prescient 1965 exploration of the darker aspects of the 1960s sexual revolution and how it introduced new oppressions for women, in particular: seemingly mandatory promiscuity and a stress on slimness that causes neurotic calorie-counting. Separated from her husband, Ellen finds herself living alone in a city she dislikes - a place that denies her past and offers no hope for her future.This book written after O¿Brien moved to London is a departure from her three previous novels but reflects similar themes.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. It’s a relatively bleak tale, punctuated by moments of fleeting happiness, joy, excitement and danger, as Ellen seeks solace from her loneliness and emotional isolation. The dialogue is awful, character development is non-existent, and there is not one worthy sex scene in the book. My favorite is the one by Peter Boxall, although he tends to favor the most recent stuff, twenty-first century ultra modern, some of which I find almost indecipherable. Predators pounce as politicians dither: With the very survival of the euro in doubt, Ireland's fiscal position is heading in a very Italian direction warns Marc Coleman".when, suddenly, I spotted a black and white book cover featuring a snarky gal with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She has also written over five works of drama and four works of non-fiction including her memoir, Country Girl. Perhaps because I'm not Irish Catholic, I don't feel sufficiently guilty about life to truly understand Ellen. The story is a tragedy in the true sense of the word, but if you’re in the mood to catch up on literature you’ve missed, you can do a lot worse than August is a Wicked Month. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Arts Gold Medal, the Frank O’Connor Prize, the PEN/Nabokov Award For Achievement in International Literature, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature.