The Country Girls Trilogy

<b>Edna O'Brien's beloved classics plunge us into the lives and loves of two girls in rural 1950s Ireland (with a new foreword by Eimear McBride).</b><br><br><b>'The taboo-breaking, the fabulous prose - there's no one like Edna O'Brien ... Beautiful.'<i> Anne Enright </i></b><br><br><b>'Novels of heart-breaking empathy, rigorous honesty and peerless beauty.' <i>Eimear McBride</i></b><br><br><b>'Brilliant and brave.' <i>Ann Patchett</i></b><br><br><b>'A treasure.' <i>New York Times</i></b><b><i></i></b><br><b><i></i></b><br><b><i>ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD'</i></b><br><br>Caithleen <b>'Kate' Brady</b> and Bridget <b>'Baba' Brennan</b> are growing up in a repressive Irish village after World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a reckless survivor. After being expelled from convent school, they dream of the bright lights of Dublin - and are rewarded with bad luck and bad sex; marry for the wrong reasons; but continue to fight the expectations forced upon 'girls' of every era to become brave new women.<br><br>Edna O'Brien's debut novels revolutionised <b>Irish </b>literature in the 1960s. <b>Banned </b>by the authorities as 'indecent' and <b>burned </b>by the clergy, they were notorious for their frank portrayal of <b>sexual </b>desire: but scandal turned to fame, and made this glorious coming-of-age tale an <b>instant classic </b>that inspires and delights readers to this day.<br><br><b>'Buoyantly youthful ... With all the freshness in the world.'<i> Sunday Times</i></b><br><br><b>'An excellent and highly unusual blend of bawdiness and innocence.' <i>Evening Standard</i></b><br><b></b><br><b>'O'Brien simply offers her characters and they come to us living.'<i> V.S. Naipaul</i></b><br><br><b>'A natural writer ... [such] unphoney charm and unlaborious originality.'<i> Kingsley Amis</i></b><br><b></b><br><b>'One of the greatest Irish writers, of this or any era.' <i>Sunday Independent</i></b><br><b></b><br><b>'One of our bravest and best novelists<i>' Irish Times</i></b><br><b></b><br><b>'A literary great.'<i> Times</i></b>