Wild Decembers

If you've never read an Irish novel, you'll love this book for its ability to distill the essence of the land and its people. If you love opera, melodrama, or soap opera, you'll love it for the passionate intensity of the characters. If you love language and poetry, you'll love it for its rich trove of vivid images. But if you are looking for a new vision of life in the Irish countryside, a set of characters different from the typical, devoutly family-oriented, self-sacrificing farm family, and a poetic style which is not described in terms of Joyce, Hopkins, Thomas, or Yeats, you may be a bit disappointed. It's an enjoyable book, and it's full of passion, but it's not unique. When Mick Bugler arrives in the small town of his ancestors to claim his inheritance, his nearest neighbors are Joseph Brennan and his sister Breege. An expansive Australian with an insensitivity to his neighbor's deeply felt commitments to his farm, Mick invites the enmity which develops when he opportunistically pre-empts the fields Joe has rented over a long period of time and challenges him regarding ownership of land. The resentments come to a head when Joe senses and moves to prevent a relationship between Mick and Breege. Joe's history of mental instability, the arrival of Mick's possessive and almost equally unstable fiance, a jealous and meddlesome Crock, and a breakdown by Breege presage deep tragedies. Unfortunately, there is little recognition by Joe, Breege, or the townspeople here that they have any responsibility for or control over the ultimate outcome. At the end of the book, all are still as irrationally motivated as they were at the beginning. None have taken charge of their lives, and there is no sense that anyone has learned anything significant. O'Brien could have used her setting and characters to more noble effect--raising this sad story to real significance, rather than just dramatic effect. She achieves such significance in Down By the River and House of Splendid Isolation. Mary Whipple

I heard a fascinating interview with the author on NPR and immediately went online to buy this novel. What a wonderful read! This is a passionate tale about love and duty, honor and sex, fidelity and family. Every single character ( & there are dozens) is drawn fully and deeply, even those characters who appear only for a few pages. The story is a simple one with its routes in "Romeo and Juliet:" two families forever at war even after they've forgotten why they are feuding. It is also a story of a small town in Ireland and every single one of its inhabitants and how they effect the three principal characters: Joseph, a farmer, and his sister Breege who falls in love with Mick Bugler, a stranger from Australia, and how their love for one another changes everyone's life. You cannot help but know that the story will end tragically, but because you care for each of the principal chararacters so much and because Edna O'Brien refuses to label some good and others bad, you keep hoping for the inevitable to be put off. O'Brien is obviously influenced by James Joyce: her language is at all times ripe and imaginative and wonderfully descriptive. Her prose also reminds me of William Faulkner and the way he had of burrowing deep into the minds and souls of his complex people. This is certainly one of the finest contemporary novels I have read in many years.

Joseph Brennan and his sister Breege have always lived in Cloontha, Ireland just like generations of Brennans before them. Joseph remains a bachelor because no woman can compete with his love for the land. Their close relationship changes when the Brennan siblings meet Australian Mick Bugler, who has recently inherited a nearby farm from a deceased relative.Joseph and Mick initially get along quite well until the ancestral dispute between their families over land drives a wedge between them. However, Breege is attracted to the handsome newcomer who admits he has a fiancee waiting for him Down Under. As she falls in love with the Australian, she tries to reconcile the differences between Mick and her beloved brother, who will do anything to keep his innocent sister from being hurt by the "Despoiler."WILD DECEMEBR is an excellent character-driven piece that will thrill fans of relationship dramas. The splendid story line is entertaining, as Ireland becomes vividly alive through the writer's pen. The three prime protagonists are fully developed so the audience understands their motives even as Edna O'Brien keeps her plot consistent to their individualism and their interrelationships. Readers who enjoy an Irish relationship drama will gain immense pleasure from Ms. O'Brien's novel.Harriet Klausner

This is a lovely, sad song of a book. You know from the start the story will end tragically, but you keep reading, just like you keep listening to a sad song. Because it is beautiful. The beauty of each sentence, each paragraph keeps you reading and after you've read the last page it stays with you like the melody of a song you can't get out of your head.

As so memorably demonstrated in "Down By The River"(1997), few limn Irish life as authentically as Edna O'Brien. Add tothat realism her singing prose, which frames each scene with the myths, mystery and madness of Eire, and the result is pure enchantment. Ms. O'Brien is blessed with a cinematographer's eye and boundless original expression, whether she is bringing to life a dance, he is "steering her solemnly, as if she were an ocean liner in her peppermint green," or anger, "She is driving recklessly, her cabbage crown askew, the little bubble car like a cauldron because of her invective." It is with such delicious narrative embellishments that the author introduces us to a rural Irish village, Cloontha, "a locality within the bending of an arm." It is here that "Fields mean more than fields, more than life and more than death too." Joseph Brennan and his much younger sister, Breege, live here and work the dairy farm their family has held for generations. Self-educated and proud of it, Joseph takes part in a battle of wits with the local school master and wins. He works hard, overcoming the vicissitudes of weather by dint of backbreaking toil. Yet, he would change nothing if he could because Cloontha is God to him. "God," he declared, "was not a bearded man in the sky but here....in Cloontha, especially at night, alone with nature." But Joseph is not alone on his mountain for long because Mick Bugler, a shepherd from Australia, arrives to claim recently inherited acreage. It is land Joseph believed was his. There is, of course, a struggle between the two men as contretemps turns to barroom brawl and eventually escalates to a courthouse battle, in which solicitors are the primary victors. This territorial dispute is exacerbated by Breege's attraction to Mick, an emotion that concerns, confounds, and, finally, overcomes her. She is also distressed by an awareness that her brother's obsession with driving Mick off "his mountain" may be the undoing of them all. "....she knew that he was entering a zone in which dreaming and waking, wrongs and semi-wrongs, would be translated and magnified into an enormity to suit the dark mad mould of his thinking." Add to the fracas a dotty, unforgettable old derelict, Crock Hanrahan, who misses little and instigates much as he "goes his way, hopping and bopping across the fields, laughing his mirthless laugh......his body like a sack of potatoes inflating and deflating, depending on whether he was in hill or hollow." We also meet two of the most lascivious sisters to be found in literature - strumpets who sell their favors not for pounds but for land and livestock. Rita "was the brains and Reena the nymphet. She made the deals, bought and sold cattle, and harangued her friendly solicitor to write letters to make hell for this person or that who got in her way." Their seduction of Mick is one of the most risible and erotic scenes to be found. It's reminiscent of some of Joyce's finest rollicking moments