Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: House of Splendid Isolation by Edna O'Brien, Edna C'Brien ISBN: 0-452-27452-4 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Female writer gets it right
Comment: I won't summarize the story, because you have several other summaries already. I will only say this: Several of the analytical comments below are simply wrong. O'Brien's view of Ireland's history is right on the mark. Ireland's "troubles" really started in the 1100's when Irishman Dermott McMurragh asked King Henry II of England to allow him to recruit Anglo-Norman mercenary soldiers to help him defeat his Irish enemy. Those mercenaries came, liked it, and stayed. THAT was the beginning of the English occupation of Ireland. But even before that, Irish families fought among themselves for control of the land and resources. You only have to read the "Cattle Raid of Cooley" to know that. In a very real sense, there IS blood in the very soil of Ireland. And O'Brien is RIGHT that the only way to ever solve that problem--or the Middle Eastern problem or the American racial problem--is for EVERY voice to be heard (that's why the narrative voice keeps changing; it is purposeful)and EVERY person to be known as a human being and not just as "them" or "the enemy."
She has these two unlikely people, each with their grievously painful stories, come to know and respect each other. She becomes like Mother Ireland (Cathleen ni Houlihan) to him, and he becomes to her like the child that she never had, the one she aborted.
It is a book that is about understanding and forgiveness, a theme amazingly and ultimately spoken through the voice of the aborted child itself. In the first chapter, this dead child's spirit hates her mother and wants her to suffer, but in the end, she understands and forgives. That is what the child prays for in the end, understanding and forgiveness.
Rating: 3
Summary: Desperate Events Lead Two Lost Souls To Solace
Comment: Mutual empathy and an unlikely friendship develop between an IRA terrorist named McGreevy, and an elderly widower, Josie O'Meara, in Edna O'Brien's, House of Splendid Isolation. McGreevy is on the run and desperately needs to find refuge when he comes across an old farmhouse owned and occupied by Josie. He takes the elderly woman hostage and they are stuck together in the house for several weeks as McGreevy faces a hostile standoff with the police. Once married to an abusive, law breaking alcoholic, Josie finds that McGreevy conjures up memories of her deceased husband. But soon Josie's fear and loath turn into compassion and understanding when she discovers the human side of McGreevy and learns that he too has suffered great losses in life. McGreevy, who has no desire to know the older woman, begins to admire and respect her, as she becomes sympathetic to his plight.
I looked forward to reading this politically motivated Irish story but found it to be only average. The narrative shifts needlessly throughout the book. Also, the characters are ambiguous in their feelings. For example, Josie barely knew her husband when she married him out of desperation. The marriage was a nightmare from day one, but years later she tenderly runs her fingers through the initials he carved on a tree and she saves his clothing and other belongings and holds them closely as she reminisces? Lastly, O'Brien's long-winded sentences and verbose prose detract from the story instead of enhancing it. The following is a sample sentence from page 94: "He'd love to take her off then, him and Nellie, across the lake and up the lordly Shannon, the Pilgrim's Way, a thing he'd always wanted to do, go through the big locks and the swing bridges, find a mooring at dusk, up to the town to a pub, wakening to the breath of nature, the herons, the grebe, and the mute swan, all around the hills bestirring themselves, heaving up out of the plains, blue and lilac, hills magnifying into the mountains." Whew! Believe it or not almost every sentence in the story reads as such.
The disjointed approach and wordiness of the book makes me only marginally recommend it to those, such as myself, who have a keen interest in the struggles of the Irish. However, if looking merely for entertainment, I'd skip by House of Splendid Isolation.
Rating: 5
Summary: Spare Prose and Extraordinary Power
Comment: Edna O'Brien in general and this very fine novel in particular deserve a much greater readership. The plot here -- IRA fugitive, McGreevy, hides out in the crumbling home of an aged widow, Josie -- is the simple premise on which O'Brien builds a vertiginous, multi-layered tale of fatefully intersecting interpersonal and national histories. The third person narrative points of view are multiple and, especially in the quick cuts to those on the fugitive's trail, occasionally confusing. McGreevy and Josie are both superbly drawn and utterly convincing, although their emotional linkage is achieved too quickly, just as the flashbacks to Josie's horrid marriage make her reveries of quiet good times with her husband scarcely credible. The prose is spare, with no wasted words, and one of the wonders of this novel is that O'Brien nonetheless thoroughly conveys the lushness of the drizzly Irish countryside, the complexity of the struggle and the underlying sense of national unity that all the characters -- no matter how harshly at war with one another -- feel. And she has packaged all that in what is also from start to finish a superbly suspenseful tale. The 230 or so pages flash by, making The House of Splendid Isolation an exciting and rewarding one-sitting read.
 |
Title: In a Time of Violence (Norton Paperback) by Eavan Boland ISBN: 0393312984 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
 |
Title: The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West ISBN: 014118065X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
 |
Title: The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen by Elizabeth Bowen ISBN: 0880014938 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 01 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
 |
Title: The Golden Notebook : Perennial Classics edition by Doris M. Lessing ISBN: 006093140X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Plays Two: Churchill (Methuen World Dramatists Ser) by Caryl Churchill ISBN: 0413622703 Publisher: Methuen Drama Pub. Date: December, 1990 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
