Hi, this is Alice.

These days, Edna O'Brien is often referred to as Ireland's greatest living writer.

But that's not what she used to be called.

Far from it.

Her first novel, The Country Girls, was banned when it came out in 1960.

Banned and burned.

As were the next six novels she wrote.

Irish women of that era were expected to stay tethered to their stoves and their needlepoint

and raise their children in the Catholic Church.

But Edna O'Brien's writing led on that they had dreams and interior lives and sexual desires.

Once during a kiss, I opened my eyes to steal at Lance at his face.

The street light was shining directly onto the car.

His eyes were closed tight, his lashes trembling on his cheeks,

and his carved pale face was the face of an old, old man.

I closed my eyes then and thought only of his lips,

and his hands, and the warm heart that was beating wildly beneath his waistcoat,

beneath his starched white shirt. How scandalous. But Edna O'Brien was not then and is not now

in it to shock. She's in it to speak the truth, with sentences that are crafted with excruciating care.

Philip Roth once described her as, quote, among the most accomplished living writers in the English language. And although she has lived in

England her entire writing life, her use of language, like her heart, is all Irish.

For instance, my parents, when they married, went to live in Brooklyn,

and my brother was born in Brooklyn.

...