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House of Splendid Isolation

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About this listen

Josie, the ailing, elderly inhabitant of an Irish country mansion, dwells in the shadowy world of remembered pain and loneliness. McGreevy, the terrorist, reintroduces the possibility of compassion and tenderness, but there is an inevitably violent conclusion to their understanding as the police net closes. With extraordinary skill and empathy, Edna O'Brien shows two faces of a divided land: the yearnings of a woman whose youthful joy was broken, and the intransigent idealism of her captor.

©1995 Edna O'Brien (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Compassion
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The music of O’Brien’s had me mesmerised. And often the tragic events she chronicles set me weeping. Fiona Shaw is the perfect storyteller.

Beautifully written - superbly read

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Seems like a kind of classic book: one which is serious. And important, partly because it’s so brilliantly written. It’s set in a time of conflict but it focuses on the country, the people in it, their thoughts, feelings, families, Conrad’s, positions. it shows a land, and how its history makes its people into players of certain roles. It’s full of rich and brilliant description, so that the back-stories feel really lived and the characters are basically people I already know, somehow transposed into this novel. Last year I read Arundhati Roy’s ‘Ministry of Utmost Happiness’, and this book is every bit as good, and in many ways similar, to that one - (though much shorter).
I’d like to describe the prose style. When changing scene O’Brien jumps straight into a description of some object or movement in the new scene, and progresses the action forward from there. The reader has to catch up, while continuing on. Just recalling the book now, my head is full of colourful tableaux that amazed me when I read them.
Finally a massive shout-out to Fiona shaw, who narrated the audible book. Fiona conveyed an enormous cast of people, with slightly different accents, facing every kind of situation. They all came alive in unique ways - an amazing achievement.

Fugitive Terrorist Meets Little Old Lady - properly seriously brilliant book

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