Edna O'Brien is the author of The Country Girls trilogy, The Light of Evening, The Love Object, and many other acclaimed books. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, O'Brien has lived in London for many years.
"The Little Red Chairs is a daring invention set at the bloody
crossroads where worlds collide: savage, tender and true."--John
Banville
"[An] extraordinary articulation of the lingering effects of
trauma.... In the end, what leaves one in humbled awe of The Little
Red Chairs is O'Brien's dexterity, her ability to shift without
warning - like life - from romance to horror, from hamlet to hell,
from war crimes tribunal to midsummer night's dream. And through it
all, she embeds the most perplexing moral challenge ever
conceived.... At a time when our best writers are such delightfully
showy stylists, O'Brien...practices a darker, more subtle magic.
Surprise and transformation lurk in even the smallest details, the
most ordinary moments."--Ron Charles, Washington Post
"[This] may be the fiercest work of [O'Brien's] estimable
career."--Robert Weibezahl, BookPage
"A brilliant pastiche of voices, tenses, perspectives."--Catherine
Holmes, Post and Courier
"A capacious novel full of exquisitely rendered miniatures....
O'Brien has long been recognized as a gifted short story writer and
here she employs her gift for closely observed moments in the
service of a novel that is deeply intimate but global in its
vision."--Tom Beer, Newsday
"A memorable work of art for our unsettled times.... [O'Brien's]
prose is as lyrically arresting as ever, her vision as astute, and
as delicate. The Little Red Chairs is notable for its interweaving
of the near-mythical and the urgent present, and for its
unflinching exploration of the complex and lasting effects of human
brutality.... At once arduous and beautiful, The Little Red Chairs
marries myth and fact in a new form that journeys, as we do now,
from Cloonoila to The Hague, from fairy-tale to contemporary
agon."--Claire Messud, Financial Times
"A remarkable novel.... Extraordinary and unsettling."--James Wood,
New Yorker
"A spectacular piece of work, massive and ferocious and
far-reaching.... Holding you in its clutches from first page to
last, it dares to address some of the darkest moral questions of
our times while never once losing sight of the sliver of humanity
at their core.... It's impossible not to be knocked out by the sly
perfection of O'Brien's prose."--Julie Myerson, Guardian, "Best
Books of 2015"
"A tense page turner and a timely one."--Billy Heller, New York
Post
"A tour de force on the atrocities we humans commit and fall prey
to, as well as an exploration of suffering and the curative power
of story."--Natalie Serber, San Francisco Chronicle
"Boldly imagined and harrowing.... Here, in addition to O'Brien's
celebrated gifts of lyricism and mimetic precision, is a new,
unsettling fabulist vision that suggests Kafka more than Joyce....A
work of meditation and penance."--Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times
Book Review, "Editors' Choice"
"Brilliant"--Kate Mulgrew
"Edna O'Brien is both brilliant and brave. This book astonished
me."--Ann Patchett
"Edna O'Brien's The Little Red Chairs is a gem of a novel, a text
to treasure."--Nuruddin Farah
"Engrossing, beautifully written, and offers the reader much to
think about.... O'Brien is a superb storyteller."--Corinna Lothar,
Washington Times
"Intoxicating.... O'Brien takes up her signature themes--close-knit
communities, love and hate for the homeland, the plight of women,
loss and desire, victimhood, romantic love--and casts their
compassionate reach far beyond Ireland.... [The Little Red Chairs]
asks the kinds of questions only a novel could dare; like a great
novel must, it leaves many of them unanswered."
--Kseniya Melnik, O Magazine
"It's hard to believe that an 85-year-old can still write books big
in size and scope with such vitality, grace and precision, but
that's exactly what O'Brien does..... [She] has created characters
so multifaceted and vivid that they don't become stereotypical as
this masterwork evolves from love story into engaging political
novel about real-world tyrants."--Joseph Peschel, Raleigh News and
Observer
"O'Brien achieves a tone at once mythical and contemporary,
archetypal and particularized, and does wonderful things with voice
and tense.... The Little Red Chairs has much to recommend it:
beautiful writing, immense ambition, a vivid cast of supporting
characters, and a rigorous humanitarian ethos."--Priscilla Gilman,
Boston Globe
"O'Brien captures an extraordinary and almost holy innerness in
each of her characters, however minor, and then plants those
characters amidst the terrible velocity, the terrible pull of world
events. O'Brien is truly at her best when she describes the private
corners of minds, those quiet and wild corners, our meditative and
our inspired selves, the self that Virginia Woolf called 'a
wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to
others.'"--Annalisa Quinn, NPR
"O'Brien has done more than many governments by giving voice to the
dispossessed in this novel of remembrance."--Susan Balee,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"O'Brien is a masterful stylist, and her descriptions of the
natural world, especially the countryside around Cloonoila, are
striking in their precision and beauty."--Norah Piehl,
Bookreporter
"O'Brien retains every element of her gorgeous writing [in] her new
novel.... Dark fairy-tale threads give the story a magic-realism
effect, but ultimately...the author's twenty fourth book is starkly
realistic. O'Brien speaks to contemporary political violence in a
suitably audible voice."--Brad Hooper, Booklist (starred
review)
"O'Brien's writing in this rich, wrenching book can be both lyrical
and hard-edged, which suits a world where pain shared or a tincture
of kindness can help ease the passage from losses."--Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
"One of those cases where the tidal wave of hype is justified.... A
book you are a bit better for having read, and how many novels can
you say that about anymore?"--Alex Balk, Awl
"One of [O'Brien's] best and most ambitious novels yet. The Little
Red Chairs is personal and political; charming and grotesque; a
novel of manners and a novel of monsters.... O'Brien's undiminished
gifts as a storyteller draw us in and then awaken us to the limits
of our own blinkered vision, the fragility of our own safe
havens."--Maureen Corrigan, NPR
"Powerful.... With her inimitable storytelling genius, O'Brien
explores the nature of evil."
--Jane Ciabattari, BBC
"Provocative, moving, masterly.... O'Brien has a way of hypnotizing
the reader."--Fiona Wilson, Times (UK)
"Reading The Little Red Chairs reaffirms a belief I've held since I
first read Ms. O'Brien's work: She is, quite simply, a
master."--Kevin Powers
"Slyly terrifying."--Vogue
"The great Edna O'Brien has written her masterpiece."--Philip
Roth
"This 18th novel from O'Brien delivers noble truths as well as
atrocities.... [Her] mastery of symbolism and natural description
remain unmatched in modern fiction."
--John G. Matthews, Library Journal (starred review)
"Unashamedly rich and thrilling to read.... It's breathtaking, a
fusion of joy, loss and brutality."--Ron Rosenbaum, Smithsonian
Magazine
Ask a Question About this Product More... |