Project MUSE - On the Side of Life: Edna O’Briens Trilogy of Contemporary Ireland (2024)

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Sophia Hillan King On the Side of Life: Edna O'Brien's Trilogy of Contemporary Ireland The plot of Wild Decembers, Edna O'Brien's third and final novel in her recent trilogy of life in modern Ireland, might seem far-fetched, if the very horror she describes had not occurred and, with almost eerie synchronicity, been reported in the press within weeks of the book's publication in 1999. The central event in the novel is the crazed killing by a farmer of his neighbor and former friend. It caused one Irish reviewer to write that "O'Brien often seems out of touch with the locality about which she writes."1 Yet, barely one month later, a newspaper account reported the horrific murder by a man of his neighbor and his neighbor's wife, because the man felt "under siege" from his neighbors, and that over the next five years he made four or five complaints to local gardai over what most people would consider minor problems. Differences ofopinion over trees and bushes and a leaky septic tank ... were typical examples. But in ... [his] ... mind the small things formed a pattern that added up to what he described as "abuse."2 Chillingly, the report tells us that the killer "was 'very forthcoming when arrested' and expressed 'great sorrow and regret' at what had happened, according to the Gardai. However, he told them he 'couldn't allow the abuse to continue.'" The scene could have come straight out of Wild Decembers. There, having killed his neighbor and sometime friend and having risked killing his own sister , the crazed brother confesses in terror and remorse to the Gardai that he has "shot your man up in the yard." When, disbelieving the normally mild man, the police probe further, he replies" 'Twas him or me" and that "from the 1. Joanne Hayden, "Unveiling Naked Truth of Rural Life," Sunday Business Post, 26 September 1999, p. 40. 2. "The Simmering Rage that Led to to Row over Pebbledash and Ended in Double Murder," Irish Times, 23 October 1999, p. 12. NEW HIBERNIA REVIEW/IRIS EJREANNACH NUA, 4:2 (SUMMER/SAMHRADH, 2000), 49-66 Edna O'Brien's Trilogy ofContemporary Ireland day his tractor pulled into our yard everything went bust ... He broke us."3 This being so, it is hard to agree with Joanne Hayden's view that O'Brien's "vision of Ireland is still rooted in the 50s and 6os." In a recent profile of the author, Nicholas Wroe confirms that O'Brien's trilogy dealing with three key issues in modern Irish life "the IRA, abortion and land.... [have] ... seen her castigated as out of touch with modern Ireland and her heightened prose style as out of touch with modern readers."4 Perhaps the opposite is true: it may prove to be the case that Edna O'Brien is utterly in touch, under the guise of near-magical realism, with the very issues that still lie at the heart of Irish life. Two hundred years after Carleton's "Wildgoose Lodge" and "Denis O'Shaughnessy Going to Maynooth" it seems that the sectarian violence, sexual repression, and what used to be called" the land question" are still central to Irish life. It is ironic to remember that, thirty years ago, O'Brien was in equal trouble for being too far in advance of the ordinary reader. Of her eighteen published novels, the first six were banned in the Republic of Ireland. Benedict Kiely has said of O'Brien's work that, "Those moles the censors ... are not able to take it." Undeterred, O'Brien has continued to give her readers the chance to "take it." Before Wild Decembers, she published the first two novels of a trilogy of contemporary Ireland: House ofSplendid Isolation (1994), in which she addresses the difficult subject of the rationale behind political extremism and its effect on those who are compelled to live with it; and Down by the River (1997), where the abortion debate and the shadow of the Kerry Babies provide the basis for a candid, compassionate, and poetic examination of some of the darkest places of Irish life. Before the publication of Wild Decembers...

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