Edna O'Brien Collins Collector's Choice

With the exception of her most recent novel and some short stories, this volume contains almost all Edna O'Brien's published works: The Country Girls (1960); THE GIRL WITH THE GREEN EYES (1962); GIRLS IN THEIR MARRIED BLISS (1964); AUGUST IS A WICKED MONTH (1965); CASUALTIES OF PEACE (1966); THE LOVE OBJECT (1968); A PAGAN PLACE (1970); NIGHT (1972); and A SCANDALOUS WOMAN (1974). 

It is impossible to do justice to Edna O'Brien's writing by a description of her novels alone but perhaps Gavin Ewart came close to the basis of her appeal and to why her audience continues to grow from strength to strength when he wrote in the London Evening Standard: 'Miss O'Brien is an expert on girls and their feelings. No writer in English is so good at putting the reader inside the skin of a woman.'

Other critics have been equally strong in their praise - particularly critics who are themselves writers. Erica Jong wrote of her: 'If James Joyce had been a woman, he would have written like Edna O'Brien. If Dylan Thomas had been Irish, he would have written like Edna O'Brien. She makes me wish I were Irish, but I wonder if that would do it. I've never read a book of hers that I didn't wish I'd written.' And Henry Miller wrote how she 'has the power of Dostoevsky to maintain suspense. What a love of detail, what weird eerie surprises she keeps in store for us.' Finally John Berger wrote of A PAGAN PLACE: 'The first 80 pages... constitute a reconstruction of a childhood experience which, so far as I know is unique in the English language... (The book) is outstandingly memorable because its genius is the pain of memory."

This collection includes:

• The country girls
• The girl with the green eyes
• Girls in their married bliss
• August is a wicked month
• Casualties of peace
• The love object
• A pagan place
• Night
• A scandalous woman