The Country Girls

By: Edna O'Brien

Narrated by: Edna O'Brien

It is the early 1960s in a country village in Ireland. Caithleen Brady and her attractive friend, Baba, are on the verge of womanhood and dreaming of spreading their wings in a wider world - of discovering love and luxury and liquor and above all, fun. With bawdy innocence, shrewd for all their inexperience, the girls romp their way through convent school to the bright lights of Dublin – where Caithleen finds that suave, idealised lovers rarely survive the real world.

©2010 AudioGO Ltd (P)1960 Edna Gebler

Friendship of circumstance

Newly exploring Edna O'Brien as a wise woman writer. Her description of Ireland sets the stage, viscerally visual, against which the dialects of the main characters in conversation pulled me even further into the world a country girl in Ireland existed in.

Beautifully written coming of age story

Listened to this book during a bitter cold snap here in the mountains, so I loved the imagery of the greenery and lilacs in the book. The two Catholic school girls and their escapades were familiar to me, even though my friends and I were a couple of decades younger. My first Edna O’Brien novel. Will definitely finish the trilogy.

interesting

This was slow (to me) at the start. I am glad I continued with it, though. Ms. O'Brien has a melodious Irish brogue that lends reality to the story.
A great coming of age story, with the thrills and heartaches of first love.

delightful and compelling

A humorous, mesmerizing and well-observed story of the difficulties and excitements of a young girl growing up poor in Ireland. Charmingly and movingly read by the author. I was hooked from the beginning and listened to many passages twice to enjoy them again.

Where have all the romantics gone?

Where does The Country Girls rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Right at the top.

What other book might you compare The Country Girls to and why?

Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. Terribly Mitford-esque..

What about Edna O'Brien’s performance did you like?

Sound of her voice, incredible diction. marvelous irony.

If you could take any character from The Country Girls out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Mr. Gentleman. You have to ask why?

Any additional comments?

Where are the negative reviews coming from? Really ladies and gentlemen, have we forgotten the romance of courtship and are we too old to remember how hard our hearts ached when we first fell in love? Edna O'Brien has not forgotten, I am hard pressed to find more than a handful of writers who could write about this experience with as much beauty and haunting charm as she evokes This is the first audiobook that has pressed a review from me. Well, I'd put Jeremy Irons reading of Lolita as my all time no. 1, but it's pretty damn hard to knock Nabokov off the top..