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Read August Is A Wicked Month (1967)

August Is A Wicked Month (1967)

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Genre
Rating
3.35 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0686408233 (ISBN13: 9780686408239)
Language
English
Publisher
irish book center

August Is A Wicked Month (1967) - Plot & Excerpts

I love that publishers are bringing back these vintage titles. This one was originally published in 1965. That’s not to say the story is dated. It’s about a young Irish woman with an eight year old son who’s been separated from her husband for a year. She’s also gone without sex for at least that long and she’s missing it. When her husband takes their son on a camping trip she bounces around her house for a bit, has a desultory sexual encounter with a conflicted neighbor, and then decides to go somewhere exciting. That place is the South of France, in August, of course. There she meets men she finds attractive who aren’t interested in her or misguided men who find her attractive though she’s not vaguely tempted by to them. All around her is the lure of sex but still it eludes her. She meets a younger American girl who’s just run into a famous Hollywood actor in their hotel. The actor and his hangers on stop by their table at the bar and they’re swept into a party at someone’s mansion. There’s a tragedy concerning someone outside their party and the group forced to head back to town.They goto a burlesque show and the flirting and innuendos continue but Ellen is really only interested in the actor. The problem is so is her friend. The actor flirts with both women. Ellen feels angst over this until something far, far worse happens. She receives word of something that turns her world to black. She languishes on in France where flirting now becomes a compulsive distraction as well as a physical need.I loved O’Brien’s character, Ellen. She’s not a girl though not quite a woman. She’s trying to figure out how to define herself and how to live the rest of her life. This isn’t a happy book but it’s also not maudlin. A few plot points are a bit over the top but for all that it’s still a realistic portrayal of a woman in Ellen’s predicament and at her time in life. In my opinion O’Brien is a less happy and less moral Barbara Pym, she’s a MUCH happier and sexier Anita Brookner and for some reason I want to throw in W. Somerset Maugham as well, specifically his “Up at the Villa” though maybe that’s more for the similar settings. This review is based on an e-galley supplied by the publisher.4.5/5 stars

More of a novella, O'Brien does a tremendous job of bringing us inside the mind of a woman, Ellen, who is hurting and insecure after a divorce. In an effort to forget, Ellen takes a holiday in France, and basically behaves in a way that ends up reinforcing her sadness and depression. I loved the way this book was written. O'Brien really takes you inside Ellen's mind the entire time, and it is hard not to empathize with her feelings and situation and her deep deep loneliness. You feel like you are watching a girlfriend do all sorts of things that you know are bad for her, and you just want her say please stop doing this to yourself, but you also know she won't listen.Unfortunately, the novel takes one misstep (in my opinion), and it's a pretty big one. Hence the four stars instead of five. But because I think the rest of the book is so exquisitely rendered, it really didn't diminish my enjoyment of the writing for long. Just a little "seriously?" came into my mind at this point. It's hard to share without spoiling.So if you require books be uplifting in order to enjoy them, don't pick this one up. If you want to see how a masterful author can develop a character so real seeming that you want to befriend, help, and guide her, this book does that and more.

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

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