Edna O'Brien: xg

THE COUNTRY GIRLS launched Edna O'Brien on a remarkable writing career. Her fiction has since been published across the world. Recently she has concentrated on novels about Ireland - property, terrorism, morality and the law. Now she returns to the world of her first novel, rural Ireland and the relatioship between mother and daughter. Whereas 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 TWILIGHT, the mother is dying, her daughter, a writer, is in the aftermath of a rotten marriage. The novel reflects their lives and their relationship down the years. There are moments of lyricism and anecdote, but essentially, 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.