What do You think about August Is A Wicked Month (1967)?
I haven't read anything by Edna O'Brien for a long time, but still have fond memories of the Country Girls trilogy. August is a Wicked Month was written in 1965 and may seem rather dated now. Ellen has left behind her life in Ireland (repression, Catholicism and Magdalen Laundries) and now lives in 'Swinging London'. With no commitment forthcoming from her latest lover, she books her first visit to the South of France and yearns 'to be free and young and naked with all the men in the world making love to her, all at once.' However her dreams for her holiday don't turn out at all how she imagines them. August is a wicked month for her in several ways.O'Brien's style is often languid and sensual, inviting the reader to share in the senses and sensations of her protagonist. Ellen is adrift where she doesn't quite belong and often wants to return home to Ireland, rather than to England. She arrives back in London 'not happy, not unhappy' to face 'a cool and lovely autumn' that will contrast with the five sizzling days suffered by Londonders during August.
—Sandra Lawson
This was terrific. A new voice, not the same Kate of The Country Girls trilogy, a slightly older but much more mature woman. Ellen Sage is, like Kate, the divorced mother of a young son. Her estranged husband and child go on a camping holiday to Wales and rather than sit around stuffy London, Ellen books a flight to the Côte d'Azure, looking for sex—pure and simple. But as Oscar Wilde said of truth, it is rarely pure and never simple. After a number of false starts with hotel staff, Ellen falls in with a louche crowd of hangers-on surrounding an American film star. And then she learns her son has been killed by a car crossing a road.There is something about the entire book that reminded me of La dolce vita. I see it in black-and-white (despite the colour that O'Brien uses frequently and forcefully). This may in part have to do with the jacket illustration. Nevertheless, there is a new level of ennui and resignation, of displacement and alienation that in some ways reminded me of—and anticipates—Joan Didion's early fiction: Play It as It Lays and Book of Common Prayer.
—Frank
I picked this up thinking, ooh a nice summery read, something on the 1001 books list and possible some guilt-free, liberated and escapist, pseudo-feminist sex frolics (somewhere in a middle ground that is neither the weird dirty old man kinkiness of Michel Houllebecq and isn't Jilly Cooper either) . Ha ha. Wrong. But first to address what is possibly the funniest and most patronising review I've ever read on the back of a book. I give you... Mr Gavin Ewart of the Evening Standard..."This is a terrific novel; it arouses sympathy and compassion like nobody's business. Miss O'Brien is an expert on girls and their feelings... No writer in English is so good at putting the reader inside the skin of a woman". Cheers for that Gav, "an expert on girls (and you know he would have pronounced it 'gals') and their feelings". I'm pretty sure that Miss O'Brien considered that this was a novel written for women, not gals and one can only speculate with lines like that, that this is a close as Gavin has ever gotten to being inside a woman, er inside the skin of a woman.This started out in a light hearted way - a sticky August, the beginnings of a potentially stickier liaison and then the decision to abandon London and head to Cannes where a holiday might promise the luxury of fast men, faster cars and nights of heady passion as surf crashes on beaches and the Moroccan zephyr flutters the luxuriant drapes of the master bedroom. Ah us ladies can only dream. The novel trundles in this direction long enough to lull you into a false sense of security but is swiftly overtaken by the harsher realities of life. Not all men look like Daniel Craig, you're not always the prettiest one in the room and then even harsher news from home breaks the last threads of the spell and before you know it, you've tried to shag half the men in the resort to no avail, suffered a massive personal tragedy, financially ruined yourself and the only souvenir you're taking home is a massive overdraft and suspected syphilis. Bon vacance indeed!By the time I'd finished this I was feeling so depressed I headed off into the kitchen to hide all the sharp implements and cracked open another bottle of wine. Apparently Catholic guilt can get you even if you're not Catholic.
—Shovelmonkey1
