Survival Kit

Edna O' Brien

Saturday, July 20, 2002

Edna O’Brien grew up in a rural village in the west of Ireland, but she's said that she had to leave home in order to write, and she has lived most of her life in London. Her fiction vividly depicts the dark side of her “beautiful tragic country”; in novels like The House of Splendid Isolation, Down by the River, Wild Decembers, and In the Forest, seemingly peaceful, bucolic landscapes harbor IRA terrorists, child molesters, and homicidal maniacs. So let’s see what she feels she would need to keep her safe and sane in the wilderness.

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