That revolutionary act

• Date: 19 December 2020
• Published date: 19 December 2020

It was, of course, not always thus. Now revered in Ireland and internationally, O'Brien was once denounced from the pulpit and banned by the censor for the audacity of her truth-telling. Now eminent, the author, like so many, became an emigrant rather than be stifled in an Ireland that treated women as second-class citizens.

Most books first published in 1960 are out of print but O'Brien's debut, The Country Girls, is still widely read - entrancing and influencing a new generation of writers and readers with what writer Elaine Feeney called "that revolutionary act of a woman writing complex women". The Country Girls trilogy was Dublin's 2019 One City One Book, embraced by the capital of a country transformed, now in tune with what had once been perceived as a discordant voice.

The elegant exactitude of her prose has...