Down by the River

I'm not here to recount the plot. I just wanted to say that this novel IS worth sticking with, even though O'Brien's style may not be for everyone. Honestly, I was really put off during the first 50 pgs. or so. As some other reviewers have mentioned, it's often difficult to tell which character is speaking in this novel. Sometimes, I'd find myself going back to prior chapters just to see if the character I was reading about had been introduced earlier. As the novel goes on, more and more characters are introduced, some who are only discussed for a mere two or three pages. This may sound annoying, but the pace of the novel is so intense and the story so riveting that I truly forgot about these "pet peeves" after awhile. I raced through this book in about three days, but if you're a fast reader, you could probably devour it in one sitting. Any writer who can weave a story in such a compelling way that its characters infuriate me is a great writer in my opinion. O'Brien perfectly depicts religious fanatics, stubborn Irish citizens who label a rape victim as a whore, and the community members outraged by the rape and the events caused by it. We also get glimpses into the mind of Mary, the victim whose unwanted pregnancy has caused such a stir. This gives the reader a chance to look at the issues from all angles, and it makes for a truly well-rounded reading experience. I learned of O'Brien's work through an Irish Lit. class in college, a class during which we only read her short stories. Just as O'Brien's short stories don't disappoint, neither does her novel. I highly recommend it!

They say the curse of the Irish is the drink. But to understand your own brutal, beautiful country as well as Edna O'Brien understands hers must be a bigger curse by far. There's no way a blessed person could have written a novel as shimmering, as ruthless and as devastating as "Down by the River": it's evidence of something more than mere talent, or even genius, at work. O'Brien's gifts are magnificent and terrifying, along the lines of stigmata and clairvoyance -- the kind of gifts that mark you. Inspired by a case in Ireland, in which a 14-year-old rape victim was forbidden by the courts to leave the country to obtain an abortion, "Down by the River" is the story of Mary MacNamara. After being raped by her father, Mary conceives his child. A sympathetic neighbor brings her to England for an abortion, but the authorities haul them back, cowing them with their ugly threats. Mary refuses to name the baby's father, and her case becomes a cause that turns her own friends and neighbors against her. She's seen as both a villain and an object of sanctimonious condescension in the Catholic community. That community's cruelty is the bitter, driving force of the book -- but it's Mary's suffering and loneliness that are at the heart of it. After a street musician befriends her (he lets her stay at his flat for a few days and buys her a cheap sweater), she writes him a letter: "I nearly died when you gave me that jumper. You shouldn't have. Turquoise is my favorite color. There are two kinds of alone, there's the kind which you are and the kind which I am. Your alone is beautiful, it's rich." It's a passage that takes you apart, the way a teenager's breathless enthusiasm is crushed by the young woman's overwhelming sense of fear and isolation. O'Brien never takes the easy way out: not even Mary's father is painted as a monster. She describes how he helps birth a colt -- reaching into the mare's womb and coaxing it out by both brute strength and force of will, saving the mother's life in the process -- with such grace and tenderness that even against your will, you feel yourself almost, almost, growing to understand him. But O'Brien doesn't hold back when it comes to her wrath at the Catholic Church, and at the small-minded Irish who slavishly follow it at the expense of their own humanity. O'Brien has lived in London for more than 20 years -- she isn't welcome in her own country, for obvious reasons -- and yet Ireland will never leave her. Her stories work on us exactly the way her homeland has worked on her. They can stare you down and tear you apart like a wolf -- and then, miraculously and tenderly, bring you back to life again, stronger and better than before. With "Down by the River," O'Brien marks us as well: it's the kind of book that takes days, maybe weeks, to shake.

Edna O"Brien's story of a young girl who becomes pregnant by a relative is based on a true story.Her version successfully captures the horror and shame thrust( by supposed christians and do gooders) upon the victim of incest and rape who is too young and naive to really understand why she can't have an abortion,or why she has become of such interest to so many people.A thought provoking and sad novel which calls in to question any one who believes that all abortion or a woman's right to choose should be illegal.

In DOWN BY THE RIVER O'Brien one of the more prevalent themes is the treatment of Mary. When everyone finds out she has went to get an abortion, people automatically assume she is a tramp, and this O'Brien portrays how someone can become so set pregnancy is a result of her "wild youthful ways." in their veiws that you fail to gain the facts before rushing to a judgement. Few people bothered to ask Mary is this pregnancy was a result of bad judgement, or a result of someone else's forceful and abusvie actions. O'Brien didn't really the reader a deep insight to how Mary may have felt as the subject of this fierce national debate. It's almost like Mary wasn't allowed to feel, or she was afraid to feel scared, frightened, angry, ashamed, fearful. Few people bothered to find out how Mary felt, it was more about what she was going to or had already attempted to do. O'Brien portrays that the characters became more concerned with the issue itself, than with the person which the issue was about and her feelings.

O'Brien relates Mary's plight of being raped and made pregnant by her father. Her desperation to abort the pregnancy is made difficult because of the anti-abortionists and her age (14). "Down by the River" is a poetic telling of harsh, ugly realities