Edna O'Brien — The Country Girls with Edan Lepucki

When Edna O’Brien published her debut novel The Country Girls in 1960, she was branded a “Jezebel” in her native Ireland—but that didn’t stop her from completing a poignant trilogy about a pair of friends coming of age in a world for which village life and convent school failed to prepare them. Despite initial backlash to her sexually frank depiction of young women’s lives and desires, O’Brien’s writing brought her acclaim and celebrity status—Vanity Fair dubbed her “the playgirl of the western world.” Novelist Edan Lepucki joins us to discuss the trilogy’s timeless appeal and the complicated-but-endearing friendship of characters Kate Brady and Baba Brennan.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Country Girls trilogy by Edna O’Brien

Edna O’Brien interview on BBC’s “World Book Club”

Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki

California by Edan Lepucki

Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki

Mother’s Before by Edan Lepucki

Italics Mine Substack by Edan Lepucki

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 35 on Maud Hart Lovelace

Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management

Ernest Gébler

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

“Laverne & Shirley”

Beaches film

Th

Transcript

Edna O’Brien (The Country Girls) with Edan Lepucki

AMY HELMES: Hey everyone. Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to forgotten women writers, or in today's case, a writer we personally had yet to discover. I'm Amy Helmes, here with my writing partner and co-host Kim Askew. 

KIM ASKEW: Hey there. Amy, can you think of a few memorable literary best friends? 

AMY: Oh yeah, that's easy. Anne Shirley and Diana Barry from Anne of Green Gables, they are kind of the first to come to mind, the ultimate kindred spirits, you know, loyal, imaginative, and inseparable. And then that also makes me think of Betsy, Tacy and Tib from Maud Hart Lovelace's, Betsy Tacy series. We did an episode on the high school books from that series with guest Sadie Stein a few years ago.

KIM: Right, and those examples you just gave are the sort of besties who would never dream of hurting one another, at least on purpose. The duo we're talking about today is a bit different. They're more sharper edged at times, and their friendship is complicated, raw, and at times painful. Think Elena and Lila from Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. 

AMY: Yeah. Or so we've heard, because if you've listened to this podcast long enough, you will know that Kim and I have occasionally tried to read those novels and we could never get through them. We are total outliers. I know, sometimes I'm like, is something wrong with me that I just never got into those books?

KIM: Something's definitely wrong with us, but, um, yeah, sorry to everyone else in the whole world. 

AMY: But in comparison, I think today's friends Kaithleen "Kate" Brady and Bridget "Baba" Brennan are probably just as gripping, if not more so, than the characters from Ferrante's novels. We're talking about a trilogy by Irish author Edna O'Brien, which includes the titles The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl and Girls in Their Married Bliss. Those were published in 1960, ‘62, and ‘64 respectively. 

KIM: Yeah, and all three books in The Country Girls trilogy were banned by the Irish Censorship Board, and they were burned in public. In fact, Ireland's Minister for Justice at the time called them filth, and he said they should be kept out of any decent home.

AMY: Which naturally makes any reader worth their salt want to rush out and grab a copy, right? We're deeply grateful to our guest today, novelist Edan Lepucki, because while The Country Girls is well known in the UK, it was a bit of a revelation for us. We'd never read it. 

KIM: Yep. This was our first time reading these books, and what a treat. So let's raid the stacks and get started.

[intro music plays]

AMY: Our guest today, Edan Lepucki, wrote the 2023 novel Time's Mouth, which was long listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and was named Best Book of the Summer by Time among many other accolades. Her debut novel California hit number three on The New York Times bestseller list and Woman No. 17, published in 2017, also garnered glowing reviews from The New York Times, The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly. 

KIM: Edan created the Instagram project Mothers Before and edited a book of essays based on that project that was published by Abrams Press in 2020. Edan, we are thrilled to have you here. I also want to give a plug for your Substack, which I subscribe to and love. Thanks for joining us today. 

EDAN LEPUCKI: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about these books with you. 

AMY: As are we. And I also realized there's a lot of us talking at the beginning here, so if at any point you wanna jump in and comment, yeah, break in. Please feel free to break in. 

KIM: Yeah. Don't fall asleep if you can help it.

EDAN: Okay. 

AMY: So Edna O'Brien was born into a strict Catholic family in 1930 in County Clare, ireland. Her home was almost entirely devoid of books. Her mother believed that reading was sinful, so the only books allowed were prayer books, and that old chestnut, Mrs. Beaton's Book of Household Management. O'Brien later described her schooling at the Sisters of Mercy in Galway as both “no education and a very rich, chaotic education.”

KIM: So after moving to Dublin, she earned a pharmacist's license and married a Czech Irish writer, Ernest Gébler. While raising two young sons, she actually secretly wrote The Country Girls, but when she showed the manuscript to her husband, he reportedly said, “You can write and I will never forgive you.” He later burned one of her drafts.

AMY: Yeah, and he wasn't the only one she pissed off. The backlash to the book's publication in Ireland was, as we said earlier, swift and brutal. She was branded a “Jezebel” and a “nymphomaniac” and essentially exiled from her own country. But abroad, she became a literary and cultural icon. Philip Roth called her quote, “The most gifted woman now writing in English.” Richard Burton once knocked on her door to recite Shakespeare.

KIM: I love that.

AMY: Marlon Brando dropped by for a glass of milk, which is so on brand for both of those gentlemen, right? Um, the evening with Brando was chaste, but there were affairs that she was having, and she became a magnet for attention. She had a fling with the actor Robert Mitchum, and she partied with the likes of Sean Connery and Princess Margaret. Wow. What a popular gal. 

EDAN: I wonder, was she on “The Crown?” I have to go back and check. 

AMY: Oh yeah, we have to look.

KIM: That's a great idea. 

AMY: Yeah. Princess Margaret does get name-dropped in these books too, right? I think at one point Baba's having her over at her house to party. Um, so Vanity Fair dubbed O'Brien the “playgirl of the western world,” and even feminists weren't really sure what to do with her. They were uneasy about how O'Brien's female characters were often depicted as wounded, dependent on men or entangled in complex emotional relationships. 

KIM: Yeah. And that said, her work has been recognized for its unflinching exploration of women's inner lives. She's talking about their desires, the societal constraints they face, and she herself, as you just described, seemed to live really fully. She had these legendary parties. She lived in a house along the river, and then just as suddenly, she basically decided to be a hermit and focus 100% on her writing. There's a really great interview with her, listeners. Um, it's on BBC's “World Book Club,” and they replayed it just after she passed away in 2023 at the age of 93. In it, she said, of The Country Girls: "My aim was to relive and possibly transmute the experiences of my life into something richer, better, and of course, funnier." 

AMY: Mission accomplished, I think. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: And since her life is so closely tied to these novels, let's go ahead and dive into the books, starting with this fun fact: She wrote the manuscript for the first book in the trilogy in just three weeks. 

EDAN: That's pretty incredible. I actually don't know that much about her, so I've loved this introduction, but I did learn that fact. After I finished it, I was both totally amazed and then ashamed for myself. 

KIM: Yeah, totally. I think most writers would be.

AMY: Well, it sounds like maybe the husband was no real peach, so maybe it was like an escape mechanism for her.

KIM: Yes. So the first book, which is The Country Girls, is narrated by 14-year-old Kate Brady. And I'm gonna read the first lines to that book:

I awakened quickly and sat up in bed abruptly. It is only when I'm anxious that I waken easily. And for a minute I did not know why my heart was beating faster than usual, then I remembered the old reason: he had not come home.

 And "he," we quickly learn, is her father. He is a violent alcoholic. 

AMY: And yeah, so that opening kind of sets the tone for the whole trilogy, but this first book follows Kate and her neighbor and classmate, Baba, as they escape their stifling rural upbringing, they get expelled from a convent boarding school together and they eventually head to Dublin in search of new experiences. In The Lonely Girl, the second book of the trilogy, Kate enters a troubling relationship with a married man while Baba pursues an even wilder path.

KIM: Yeah. And by the time we get around to the last book in the trilogy, Girls in Their Married Bliss, both women are stuck in deeply unsatisfying marriages. They're grappling with how little the world's supporting their emotional and intellectual growth. It's a coming of age story that becomes progressively more unsettling, but it's also incredibly funny and emotionally rich. So Edan, I'm curious. What drew you to The Country Girls, and what was your first experience reading it?

EDAN: So last year I read the whole trilogy in like four days on a writing retreat where I was alone. At these retreats, I typically spend like two hours every morning before I do anything else, just reading. And so it allows me to really sink deeply into books that would, you know, take me longer to read, or maybe I don't have the focus or there's too many other obstacles in my reading path. Um, but I had decided to bring this with me on the retreat because my friend, Jenna (maybe you two have a similar relationship) but she's like my reading friend. A lot of the books that she recommends, I'm like, “Oh my God, this is one of my favorite books.” And so I kind of saved the trilogy to bring to the retreat. Um. I'm so glad I did because it completely colored the entire week with just the total love of reading. When you find a book that is just, you feel, I don't know... when I read these books, I felt like, “Okay, this is the perfect book. This is the book that's made for me.” I just love it so much. I don't know anybody else likes it as much as I do, but I was so connected to these characters, and I loved the writing style and the level of detail, and I was so emotionally moved by the whole thing. 

AMY: Yeah. It's like when you fall in love with TV characters in a series or something, you don't want to stop being with these two girls.

EDAN: Yeah. Yeah. I will also say, I looked back in my writing log that I keep during my retreat, which is also a place where I copy passages of what I'm reading or I kind of reflect on my reading. And in there I wrote very clearly, like, “the first 40 pages were kind of slower.” And then something clicked and I was just, the seatbelt was on and I was going. So I wanna tell everybody who tries to read these books, like it's not that they're bad 40 pages, but I just was not engaged, and then it was like the spell was put on me. 

KIM: I love that you said that, because that's the exact same experience I had too. But then once I read it through once, like I wanna go back again and read that first part knowing what I know. Yes. 'cause I feel like I love it more. Um, I agree. I was not sure in the very beginning I was like, “Oh, okay.” And then totally pulled in. 

AMY: And Kim, I wonder if that's what's going on with us with the Ferrante books, too? Because it's always like a certain point, that beginning part of the first novel I just can't get into. Yeah. And then I always put it down. 

EDAN: I do have to say the Ferrante books, I was laughing thinking about it because every single Ferrante book, I would start and be like, “I don't see what the big deal is. Why am I so into these?” And then cut to like five hours later and I can't stop reading.

AMY: Okay. Okay.

EDAN: So I think it's a similar quality, so maybe you should try them again. But also I'm totally okay, with books that I don't like that everybody seems to love. 

KIM: I just don't wanna miss out on the joy of it if it really is so great. Like, I want a piece of that too, but, um, I think it would be great to give listeners a taste of the writing. So do you want to read a passage, Edan, that you particularly enjoy? 

EDAN: Yes, I am going to cheat and read two, but they're short.

KIM: Great.

EDAN: Okay. So I chose first a passage that I think probably was the very first passage in the book that was the start of the, “I'm gonna be obsessed with these books.” Um, it concerns Baba's mother, Martha, and it's just a very short description of her that I thought was just… she's so good at these kinds of epigrammatic descriptions of minor characters. Okay, here we go. 

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 travelers 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.

KIM: That's so good. 

AMY: “Desperate Housewives’ right there. 

EDAN: Yeah, I mean there's so many amazing, like the description of her hair, blue-black pile of hair, and that kind of list. And I love how Kate can kind of get to the marrow of people very quickly. And it's kind of that… everyone always says “unflinching” as a phrase to talk about writing, but I think that's here a little bit. So that was the first one, and then the second one was near the end when you get to Girls in Their Married Bliss. The first two books are told from Kate's perspective,and the third one, we get Baba's perspective for the first time. (Side note: I have a dog now named Babaganoush, but we call him Baba for short. So now I'm having a weird cognitive dissonance. I'm talking about my dog.) But Baba, the human Irish person in Edna O'Brien's novels, we finally get her perspective, and it's this revelation to hear her point of view. She goes on this sort of rant about Irish men. She's talking about fumbling with this guy who actually doesn't know how to be amorous, and she's annoyed with him and she says:

 An Irishman. Good at battles, sieges and massacres. Bad in bed. But I expected that. It made him a hell of a sight nicer than most of the sharks I'd been out with who expected you to pay for the pictures, raped you in the backseat, came home, ate your baked beans, and then wanted some new experimental kind of sex and no worries from you about might you have a baby because they liked it natural without gear. I made him a cup of instant coffee and when he went to sleep, I put a quilt over him and I sat on the chair thinking of the 18 months in London and all the men I'd met, and the exhaustion of keeping my heels mended and my skin fresh for the Mr. Right that was supposed to come along. 

AMY: She's so hard and cynical. 

EDAN: She's so hard. Yeah. 

AMY: In contrast with Kate, who is like just a raging romantic, and so sentimental.

KIM: Naive, even.

AMY: Did you guys have the experience when Baba emerges in that third book, like, “Oh, hello!” Like, I was so excited to finally get to hear from her. 

KIM: Oh yeah. Completely. 

EDAN: I would say I was startled, yeah, because once you're in the third book, you think it's going to be more of the same. I have to admit, there was one part of me that was like, “I don't know if I can handle this change. And I miss Kate!” But then Baba has so much energy. I love the honesty about her. And you can see that like a tinge of vulnerability. Oh yeah. And that really keeps me connected to her. And then she's funny, and she just says it like it is. 

AMY: Yeah, everything you thought you knew about Baba in the first two books, you get a whole different layer added on top once she starts talking.

KIM: Yeah. That's why I wanna read it again too, because I took Baba so literally from the beginning when she would say these mean things or the way that she talked to Kate. And then I increasingly started to understand that a lot of it was teasing or just it was a totally different vibe than I was hearing it in my head, especially once we got to Baba's voice. I was like, “Oh, I get this person so much more now.”

AMY: Yeah, so "frenemies" is probably the best word to describe these girls' relationship. Baba can be so cruel, especially when they're younger, but she's very blunt and fun. I mean, she stirs up trouble and it's a lot of fun for Kate, despite her misgivings. And Baba's personality really bolsters Kate. She needs somebody like that in her life.

EDAN: I think in the book you understand why they're a pair. Just like you said, Kate is soft, maybe too soft. Baba is hard, maybe too hard. And so they need those opposites in order to, you know, move through the world. And I think Baba is so mean, and yet you kind of appreciate it. And I think in a way, Kate likes that. I don't know if that's because of her own upbringing and she wants the abuse or she just sort of needs someone to like to pull her out of her shell a little bit. And I think she sees the softness in Baba a little bit and so she kind of just lets it go. Um, but I think whatever happens, they're always so compelling together. They're just meant to be friends because they're yin and yang. 

KIM: I feel like you saw it accurately, and it took me a little while to get to that place where I'm like, “Oh, yeah, okay. I get this friendship now.” 

AMY: They're neighbors, basically, in the same little village. And sometimes you just wind up being friends with the person who's there.

KIM: That's true too. Yes. Yes. 

AMY: So it is going to foster that sort of like, “We probably wouldn't be friends organically, but we're all we have.” And Baba is Kate's sanctuary. When it really matters, she's the one that's gonna snuggle up to her in bed and make sure that she's okay. 

KIM: The only one. The absolutely only one.

AMY: Yeah. 

EDAN: Yeah. I think because they're from the same village too, they have this context that allows them to see each other fully when they're out of that milieu. So they have that kind of sibling, like, “I didn't choose you,” sibling quality. Yes. But they also are like, “Oh, I knew you from the beginning and we both came from no opportunity Ireland, so we're gonna stick together. We know each other.” 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I wanted to read the line from near the beginning where she first talks about Baba. She says: Coy, petty, malicious. Baba was my friend, and the person I feared most after my father. 

EDAN: That's great. It is very similar to the Ferrante novels in that regard.

AMY: I also was getting like Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey from Beaches, you know? They're the odd couple that probably shouldn't be friends on paper, but they just really are, especially when they move to the big city, Dublin and they're roommates and living on their own. That gave me a 100% “Laverne and Shirley” vibe, but like a dark “Laverne & Shirley.” 

KIM: I love that. Uhhuh. Yep. 

AMY: It just takes you back to what it was like, for me at least, to be young and poor and having a girl roommate that we're both trying to like scrape by in the world. Um, my favorite anecdote from that section of the book is where they decide to dye their underwear black, that way they don't have to wash it as often. 

EDAN: Amazing. Another corollary for me was “Girls,” the HBO show with Lena Dunham.

KIM: Yes, totally. Mm-hmm.

EDAN: Because Lena Dunham's character and Allison Williams' character, I can't remember her name, they're also like such opposites, you know, we have like an uptight, striving, pretty one. And the kind of like self-absorbed messy one, but they need each other to negotiate the world together. 

KIM: Yeah, it's interesting because Kate is like, she's a scholarship winner, she's doing well in school. Um, Baba's kind of seemingly jealous of that and sort of gets in the way of it. I mean, she's the reason they end up getting expelled from … (I won't say what happened to spoil it but it's a pretty funny story) … but she's the reason they get expelled from the convent school. 

EDAN: Yeah, it's interesting. Baba has a more stable home life, you know? I think she feels safe at home. Not that she wants to be there, but she has a place to go in a way that Kate doesn't. And so it's like they both have something that the other one wants. Like Kate is the more ambitious and goody goody sort of... 

KIM: People-pleaser, also. 

EDAN: Yes. Yeah. But she doesn't have the home life. And then we have the opposite with Baba. And I think they each want the other thing. Yeah. 

AMY: Baba's also a bit more racy and more advanced with the guys, you know? And so she's always taking Kate along on, you know, double dates and things, which Kate does not wanna be doing. It's like when your friend leaves you 'because she's off making out with some guy. 

KIM: I've been there. [laughing] I've been on both sides. But yeah. Anyway. 

AMY: Yeah. Um, but so as the series progresses, the girls' growth feels increasingly stunted. You can tell that they don't have any real mentors to guide them. It's just sort of the two of them against the world. And the men in their lives… so Kate's father, who's an alcoholic, and then in particular this guy who lives in their home village, Mr. Gentleman. We haven't brought him up yet. I kept thinking of Mr. Big, but like an inappropriate Mr. Big, you know? Yeah. He's like the end all, be all to Kate, but he's acting in a way that is completely inappropriate. He's too old for her. He's married, but yet he's still pursues her and she's a young teenager. It's totally wrong. 

KIM: Oh, totally. 

AMY: Yep. Um, but so her interactions with him, and as I said, her father, there's like the tavern keeper who's kind of handsy with her and is always wanting to get a little smooch. You know, it feels like the relationship with men across the board, it's always kind of threatening or exploitative. 

KIM: And it's interesting because in an interview O'Brien mentioned that the one man she loved and felt protected by growing up was this workman on her family's farm. And that's actually echoed in the book.Kate has this bond with a family farmhand named Hickey. It's interesting that it's just this one person out of all the men. 

EDAN: It's really tragic, but at the same time it feels deeply realistic. And so sometimes, I think especially if you read historical fiction, commercial historical fiction has like rose-colored glasses over some of what it was like to live in a certain time where suddenly, the women of the time have a kind of feminism and independence that they wouldn't have. I mean, these girls have zero opportunities. They're just supposed to get married and have children, and they don't want that for themselves. Um, at the same time, it's deeply compelling. Like even as I didn't want her to get involved with Mr. Gentleman, it made total sense that she would. She has no father figure, so, of course a more, you know, esteemed member of the village who takes an interest in her, that's an age old story, right? The girl who isn't feeling loved at home is going to seek it out somewhere else in a bad way. But even as I didn't want her to go towards him, I was like rapt. There's a moment when he's basically showing her his penis and she describes it in this amazing way.

AMY: Like an orchid. But it was like a gross, creepy moment, right? 

EDAN: Yes. It's like perfectly described and I think what she captures there, and I thankfully did not have a Mr. Gentleman in my life, but I think she does capture that kind of youthful innocence that's misguided and bringing oneself toward experience, even if it's not gonna be a positive one. And I think that often happens for young women, um, sexually speaking. And so the fact that she was able to capture that on the page and I think this book is successful because it feels at once totally of its time. Like I learned so much about rural Ireland and what it would be like in this era, but also like it’s so modern. You know when they say “timeless,” this is it. Yeah. So I could understand why in her day people were shocked by it. It feels so unvarnished. You're like, here is a sexual experience between a young woman and an older man who should not be involved and this is what it would be like and this is how this girl would respond to it. So I thought that was incredible. 

KIM: Yeah. It's super frank in a way that you would be like, “Oh wow.” For that time it is different. Yeah. 

EDAN: Also think like Mr. Gentleman is a little bit like Mr. Rochester. If it was true, like, “come and be with me. I actually have a wife, but you never see her 'cause she's not well.”

KIM: Oh, I love that comparison. That's great. Yeah. 

EDAN: And then like later, Eugene is Kate's husband. And the arc of that relationship is so fascinating, but he has real Rebecca vibes. He had a wife that's not there anymore. And there's like the housekeeper in his house. 

KIM: Totally. Yep. 

EDAN: But it's like these old stories that we have read before, but retold to be more realistic, I guess. 

KIM: Yeah. I almost wonder like if people were more upset about the way it portrayed rural Irish people and life than they were the actual sex of it, you know? Who knows? 

AMY: But I wanna talk about that actually because just mentioning this rural village, it really does give you a glimpse into what life was like then. And I kept almost getting the timeframe wrong in my head. I kept almost wanting to go to like the 1920s or 30s when they're living in the village, because the mom just seems so antiquated. And then you realize like, no, it's actually much later. Their village is just so kind of…

KIM: It's behind the times. 

AMY: Yeah. Yes. But, um, I have a real life anecdote from my time visiting Ireland that fits in with this novel so well, so I just wanna tell it really quickly. I was in my early twenties with my, um, old college roommate and we're in this little village and we didn't have a place to stay, so we found a bed and breakfast owned by this woman, Eileen. It's very like Waking Ned Devine kind of village. So that night we go to the local bar and the bar owner was an older man named Eddie and he got a little handsy with me. He cupped my boob over my sweater. 

KIM: I’ve never heard this story!

AMY: So the next morning we're having our porridge and Eileen's like cooking for us, and we told her the story and she was so taken aback. She was like, “My god! Eddie! He's a grandfather!” She was outraged because she knew him, you know? I mean, because it was that small of a village, and I was like, reading The Country Girls and thinking about that memory.

KIM: Oh, totally, totally. Like every, every, uh, possible opportunity taken. 

AMY: Right, right. With like a twinkle in his eye. Yeah. 

EDAN: Yeah. Where you're like, “Oh no, thank you.” Yeah. I always read a few Larry McMurtry books every year, and he has a similar quality when he writes about rural Texas. The series that has The Last Picture Show in it, it feels like it's from 1890. But it's not. It's supposed to be like the 1950s. But it just feels like a bygone time where they're in this enclosed community. Everybody knows everybody. Technology has not made its way into this little village. Um, so it has a similar quality and a similar kind of like, uh, sexual dysfunction, too.

AMY: Yeah. But when the girls in this book wind up moving to the city, it's suddenly like you get transported to the correct time frame, right? There's a shift from rural to urban and it adds a whole lot of, uh, new energy to the book once they're there. That's what I love about this series too. There it's kind of always shifting vibes. It never stays in one place for too long. And so the girls have this newfound freedom now, right? They're on their own, and it seems like you just see them repeating their own mothers' cycles, right? So they both had moms that were frustrated and depressed with their lives. And then the vicious cycle continues. And there's actually a line from the book where, um, Kate, in the third book, she says something about parents and then Baba thinks: Parents. This whole ridiculous mess beginning all over again. Hers, mine, and all the blame we heaped on them and we no better ourselves. Parents not fit to be kids. So Baba has an awareness of like, “We're doing the same damn things our parents were doing.”

KIM: Mm-hmm. 

AMY: Yeah. 

EDAN: Generational trauma!

KIM: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Well speaking of that, um, we should talk a little bit specifically about the writing about sex and intimacy, because it's blunt, it's awkward, sometimes it's emotionally raw. There's a seduction scene in the second book where Kate doesn't even understand the word trauma, of course, but she knows what she's feeling isn't right. And this confusion and fear she has, it ends up running through so much of her experiences. Um, Edan, do you want to read the passage I'm talking about? 

EDAN: Oh, sure. Okay. So this is, this is a passage where she's kind of staying with Eugene, who's the man she ultimately will be with, and this is kind of their first, it's like a failed encounter.

I took off the coat, which I had been using as a dressing gown, and he raised the covers up and gathered me in near him. I shivered, but he thought it was with cold. He rubbed my skin briskly to warm it, and said that my knees were like ice. He did everything to make me feel at ease. Have you fluff in your belly button,” he asked as he poked fun at it with his fingers. It was one thing I was very squeamish about, and instantly I began to tighten with fear. My whole body stiffened. What's wrong?” he said as he kissed my closed lips, he noticed things very quickly. Are you filled with remorse?” It was not remorse. Even if I had been married, I would've been afraid.

What is it, darling? Little soft skin.” If he had not been so tender, I might have been brave. I cried onto his bare shoulder. “I don't know,” I said hopelessly. I felt such a fool crying in bed, especially as I laughed so much in the daytime and gave the impression of being thoughtlessly happy. “Have you had some terrible, traumatic experience?” he asked. Traumatic? I had never heard that word before. I didn't know what to say. I don't know. I said. I don't know if the only sentence which formed itself in my crying brain, he tried to assure me to say that I need not worry, that there was nothing to be afraid of, that surely I was not afraid of him.

He caressed me slowly and gently and I was still afraid before that. On armchair in the motor car in restaurants, I touched his hands, kissed the hairs on his wrists, longed for the feel of his fingers on my soft secret flesh. But now everything had changed. He said that I should talk about it. Tell him what exactly appalled me, discuss it. But I couldn't do that. I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up, finding that it was all over the way you wake up after an operation. 

It's so interesting that she doesn't even know that word, that that's not something in the lexicon for her. Yeah. And yet she's had all these dramatic things happen to her.

KIM: Mm-hmm. 

EDAN: I also think it's interesting that she's like, if he hadn't been so tender, it would've been easier. And I think there's like this idea of like, if he would just take it rather than having me be emotionally open or whatever he's doing there makes her feel more unsettled and weirded out.

KIM: Yeah. It's like when someone's nice to you and it's gonna make you cry harder almost. It's like that feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. 

EDAN: Can I read another? It's a very short paragraph that's actually from when they finally do it, which I have to say, it's one of those things where you're complicit in this situation because as a reader, you're like, “I don't think you should be with this guy.” But then you're so excited. You're like, “Okay, they're gonna have sex here. What's gonna happen? I want it to happen.” 

KIM: Totally. Yeah. 

EDAN: How is it gonna be written? But yeah, she has this incredible paragraph that at the time that I read, I put a star next to it because I just thought it was such an amazing paragraph. So it's happening. The sex is happening, and she says: I felt no pleasure, just some strange satisfaction that I had done what I was born to do. My mind dwells on foolish, incidental things I thought to myself. So this is it, the secret I dreaded and longed for. All the perfume and sighs and purple bras and curling pins in bed and gin and it and necklaces had all been for this. I saw it as something comic and beautiful. The growing excitement of his body enthralled me, like the rhythm of the sea. So did the love words that he whispered to me. Little moans and kisses. Kisses, and little cries that he put into my body until at last he expired on me and washed me with his love. 

KIM: Wow.

AMY: I think what we're omitting in all of this discussion is the Catholic guilt that is pervasive throughout these books. That kind of explains a lot of her inhibitions. They're raised in the most Catholic country in the world and there's so much, um, dogma that even though they're trying to rebel against it as young women, you know, especially Baba, but you know, they can't escape it. It's too ingrained in them. It's too much of a part of their world. Even like the superstitions that they still believe, like there's, you know, there were funny little things that they couldn't do because it would be superstitious. 

EDAN: I was not raised Catholic, so I cannot speak to this. 

KIM: Amy can tell us about the Catholic part and all that. Yeah, she's our Catholic expert there. 

KIM: And the interesting thing is through all this, they don't have any women really modeling or talking to them about everything, and they're just kind of alone almost, it feels like in their world, without anyone helping them navigate any of this. I think that's part of the reason they lean on each other, um, sometimes in a good way. And sometimes it's destructive. And I was thinking Edan, about your novel, uh, Woman No. 17 and the tension between women. And I was wondering if you saw any parallels in your work about, uh, this tension between women? 

EDAN: Oh, well thank you for connecting my lowly book to these. Um, you know, I can see it when I read the books. I always sometimes call it a retroactive influence. Like, clearly I could not have written any of my books without this existing first. I was not aware of these books until last year. But what she does is what I like in fiction and what I often aspire to do, which is show characters in her lives and show everything as unvarnished as possible. And I think sometimes people call Woman No. 17 “mean,” and I see what they mean, but I guess I didn't set out to do that. But there is something kind of snarly between the two characters in that book, which is like a woman who's a mother and then a girl who's like 22 and the 22-year-old works for the mother and they become friends, but there's other stuff between them that cannot let them truly connect fully. Um, so I definitely see that parallel, but I'm totally attracted to that kind of story. Like, you know, the Neapolitan novels and this book. Um. Like books like We Need to Talk About Kevin is one of my favorite books by Lionel Shriver and I love it because it is just so honest, I guess it's real. 

KIM: Yeah. It's interesting that people would think, “Oh, it's mean,” as if that's a bad thing. It's real. People aren't always nice to each other.

EDAN: I mean, I try to be a nice person and I think I'm generally nice, but I don't necessarily want all my characters to be paragons of excellence.

KIM: Please don't. 

EDAN: I think that's not realistic or it's kind of boring. 

KIM: It is in the end. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this book would be really boring without Baba in it. 

AMY: I still am thinking about O'Brien putting this book out into the world, as frank as it was at the time period and how brave that was. Uh, especially knowing that it was fairly autobiographical. Are we thinking she's more of a “Kate” or more of a “Baba?” Because she kind of seems like there's both of her. 

EDAN: That's what I thought. I mean, one of my favorite things about Kate is the way that she describes nature, and there's one point where Baba and I think in the last book is like, “Ugh, Kate with her stupid trees,” or whatever she says, but clearly, Edna O Brien embodies both of those characters. Or she's able to see the moonlight on the river. And throughout the novels, Kate finds that pleasure. Like that's sort of, to me, the anchor towards her true self is like her appreciation for natural beauty. Um, and so, Edna O'Brien couldn't write those without having also had that appreciation or at least seen it to be able to write it. And she must have that element of Baba in her too. Nobody is one thing or the other, you know? Yeah. Everyone's a little bit of both, but yeah. Yeah. I wonder, did the world see her as a baba? But she had a true Kate inside of her. That's my guess. Mm. Yes. 

AMY: And how, Kim, you were saying that she would have these wild parties and everything. But then suddenly she would turn into a hermit and wanna just be sitting home writing. So yeah, I definitely think that's true. 

KIM: So. O'Brien returned again and again to stories of girls and women in distress as she continued to write. Um, she talked about their desires, their lives being constrained. How do you see her legacy today? 

EDAN: You know, I remember the news of her death, but I didn't know who she was and I was really sad. The same actually (to bring back Larry McMurtry) the same thing happened. I knew who Larry McMurtry was. I had known what Lonesome Dove was, but I did become a real fan of his until after his death. And in both situations I felt so sad that there was no way for me to ever like to reach out to them. (Not that we would have some kind of friendship, but just, you know, being on the earth at the same time and appreciating them.) Um, and I have not, in fact, gone back and read any other Edna O'Brien novels. I know there are many of them, and I love these books so much that I'm kind of afraid and I need to make sure that the next one I read, you know, really hits the spot again. But I have told so many people to read these and I think she is in this long lineage, this important lineage of writing about girls and women in a way that feels totally authentic. It doesn't have regard for what would be considered appropriate and be like, you know, maybe this doesn't feel good, and maybe we're not seeing an evolution towards a happier woman, but we are seeing what it was like for these Irish women in this era and how some of those struggles still reverberate today. Like these feel so supremely modern to me and culturally relevant to a lot of the discussions like the #MeToo movement or women controlling their own bodies and having, you know, the power to choose the way they live their lives. I mean, sadly, we're having that discussion now. So I think she's really important. And I could see anyone who is into character driven realism would love these books. I can't see how you wouldn't love them. I agree. 

AMY: Yeah, and I was thinking this morning, like of all the novelists we've featured on this show, she's probably one of the lesser “lost,” and I bet a lot of our listeners have already read this book. I bet they're already quite familiar, so I feel a little embarrassed that I hadn't read her before. So I'm glad to hear, Edan, that you were in the same boat as us. But listeners, since we're supposing that many of you were already familiar with Edna O'Brien, let us know what we should read next.

KIM: Yeah, listeners, weigh in. We wanna know. We'll keep you posted if we hear. 

AMY: Also, we should really quickly touch on the film adaptation, the film from 1983, which I had no idea about. 

KIM: Sam Neill is Mr. Gentleman. 

AMY: Sam Freaking Neill is Mr. Gentleman! Which, if you've listened to our episode on Miles Franklin, you will know that Kim and I are in love with Sam Neill. So, um. It kind of threw us both off a little bit to see Mr. Gentleman be the sexy Sam Neill. 

KIM: We’re like, “Oh, yeah. Fine, then, it's totally okay now.” [laughing]

AMY: It just shocked me because I was picturing Mr. Gentleman as a kind of skinny old man that she had feelings for, but the rest of us readers could see was so wrong.

KIM: She wrote the screenplay. Edna O'Brien wrote the screenplay so maybe it was sort of her idea of what… Baba and Kate — I thought they played it really well. Like I loved their relationship in the movie. 

AMY: Yeah. And I think Baba was more playful than cutting in the film.

KIM: More playful than cutting. Yeah. Playful. 

AMY: That reminded me of one other little anecdote from the book. Baba would accuse Kate of shaving her face. And then, um, there was a remark made that Kate had two hairs coming off her chin and Baba literally bit them off with her teeth. 

EDAN: Oh yes! I'm so glad you brought that up, and I had forgotten about that because that was a moment where I clutched the book to my chest because that is such a female friendship quality. Fierce and also so loving and intimate at the same time and kind of gross. It's great.

AMY: Kim. I will never be doing that for you. 

KIM: No, I'm not doing that. 

AMY: Um, okay. So yeah, for any listeners out there who have not read The Country Girls yet, we highly recommend reading the whole thing. Each novel is fairly short, so it's not daunting at all to dive into it. You're gonna get hooked, I promise you. 

KIM: Yeah. This has been such a great conversation. I loved it. 

EDAN: Thank you so much for giving me a chance to revisit the books, and maybe I'm gonna start rereading them tonight. 

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Join us back in two weeks when we'll be discussing a novel by another lost lady.This next one is set in a brothel in Belle Epoch Vienna. I'll also be back next week with a bonus episode for everyone who subscribes. Thank you so much for your support. 

KIM: Our theme song was written to perform by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim.