The Light of Evening

by EdnaO'Brien (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $3.28

  With THE LIGHT OF EVENING Edna O'Brien returns to the world of her early fiction, rural Ireland and the relationship between mother and daughter. Whereas her first novel THE COUNTRY GIRLS was, as she once said, ' a simple little tale of two girls who were trying to burst out of their gym frocks and their convent, and their own lives in their own houses, to make it to the big city', in THE LIGHT OF THE EVENING the mother is dying, her daughter, a writer, is in the aftermath of a rotten marriage. The novel reflects their lives down the years. There are moments of lyricism and anecdote, but as with everything Edna O'Brien writes, it is her understanding of character that wins through. When we meet the mother, now in her seventies, she is seeing her doctor. She knows she is seriously unwell. Ovarian cancer is diagnosed. First the mother tries a faith-healer, but eventually accepts the inevitable and hospitalisation. There she recalls her life: going to America (through Ellis Island), becoming a servant - this historical part is full of good anecdote. The mother marries back in Ireland.Her husband loves training horses; as well as a daughter there is a son, who becomes involved with the IRA and dies. The daughter is sophisticated, she leaves Ireland, marries an older man (is this to escape?), starts reading for a publisher, then writing, has children. Back to her mother in Ireland she sends gifts. As her mother lies dying she returns. The author's understanding of the mother-daughter relationship makes the appeal of this novel universal.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.28

  From her hospital bed in Dublin, the elderly Dilly awaits the visit of her daughter, Eleanora, from London. The epochs of her life pass before her; emigrating to America in the 1920s, a romantic liaison she had there, the destiny that brought her back to Ireland, and her marriage. She also retraces Eleanora's precipitate marriage to a foreigner, and Dilly's heart-rending letters sent over the years in a determination to reclaim her daughter. Eleanora's visit does not prove to be the glad reunion that it might have been and, in her sudden departure, she leaves behind the secret journal of their stormy relationship. The Light of Evening is a novel of dreams and broken dreams but, at its core, is the realisation that the bond between mother and child is unbreakable, stronger even than death.