Saints and Sinners

In this collection of stories, Edna O'Brien's prose is fierce and precise, whether the subject is a lonely librarian waiting for a favorite poet, a ditch digger, or a slow-witted hardware store helper. She seems always to find a description that gets at the heart of a place or character, her dialogu......more

Initially my response to Edna O'Brien’s Saints and Sinners: Stories (kindle Edition) was that I had no particular memories of any of it, barely a couple of weeks after finishing. Coming to write this review, I remembered first that this is a book of unhappy people. They are trapped in drunkenness, f......more

Edebiyat üzerine söylenen beylik lafların nihayeti yoktur. Bunlardan biri de, edebiyatın ötekinin ve ötekiliğin deneyimini sunarak ben ile ben-olmayan arasına bir halat germesidir. Ben-olmayan’ın deneyimi okundukça halatın boyu kısalır. İnsan kendisini ve ötekini bu karşılaşma ile tanır. Halat kaybo......more

I love O’Brien’s stories, and I know I shall return to them again and again because they do not unfold easily, necessarily, the first time. In “Shovel Kings,” a first-person narrator recalls another character (Rafferty) who then tells the story—rather by way of being interviewed by the narrator. Int......more