THE LOVE OBJECT

by Edna O'Brien ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 1968

Eight short stories, five of which have appeared in The New Yorker, relate directly to Miss O'Brien's novels ranging in tone from her gentler Country Girls beginnings to the more savagely disenchanted later novels. In the latter, as well as in the opening (title) and closing stories here, there are her loveless, lonely women drifting through impossibly impermanent affairs: one hanging on to the jagged memory of pain in order to have something rather than nothing; the second trapped by the ""strain and incomplete loving"" of her marginal future as well as by the present. ""The Rug,"" an unknown donor's gift and the fulfillment of an Irish woman's dream, proves to have been sent by mistake, and the wistfully romantic girl of ""Irish Revel"" is also a part of Miss O'Brien's beginnings in the Irish back country. There are one or two patchy vignettes, but then there's her older, house-proud, middle-aged woman looking forward to the day (""An Outing"") when she'll have porkchops and a cuddle with the friend she meets on Saturdays on that newly acquired, second-hand suite in her living room. Facile -- in the best sense of the word, smarting, sad, catchy commentaries which show this writer in demonstrable command of the form.

Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1968

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION