August is a Wicked Month

Product Information

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. When she falls in with a crowd attached to an American movie star, things look more promising. There are parties in big houses and plenty of attention from rich, powerful men. (Think The Great Gatsby but set in the sun of the French Riviera.) I got myself into a quagmire with The Light of Evening because it was two different books and I wrote it about my mother, whom I had a certain ambiguity towards. It was written shortly after she died and I felt guilt and relief and confusion within myself, and perhaps that meant that I wasn’t fully in charge of the material.”

Make your June good, July better, and the month of August best by looking into the eyes of the sun.” – Anonymous

but for the most part the tone is just right -- direct, sardonic rather than bitter, free of confessional whine. Only the son's death seems forced, inserted as a plot device (a crude forewarning doesn't help). Ellen may not be

The brilliant poppy flaunts her head amidst the ripening grain, and adds her voice to sell the song that August is here again.” – Helen M. Winslow On the 28th September, I’ll be making my way to Bray to attend the excellent Bray Literary Festival. We used to play football on the levee with no shirts on in the summer August in New Orleans, and my skin would turn red.” – Aaron Neville isolated that she (ludicrously, he takes pictures of her breasts, then insists she tell him dirty words to record in his private notebook). Eventually she joins a dolce vita house party and loses a muscular actor A sensitive topic - he death of a child, was jumbled into the narration...out of the blue. Grief isn't the same for everyone, I am not judging Ellen's reaction to the news, but what I am confused about is how the writer managed to implement the event in the novel.When you enter August, you want some beach days, some relaxing days, and some wife-out-of-town days.” – Anonymous So, I splurged and found myself a lovely first edition of this book, a hardcover which smells like the 1960s, which is just when this novel happened to have been written by Irish author, Edna O'Brian. Under the soft skin and behind the big, melting eyes her heart was like a nutmeg. Some of it had been grated away by life but the very centre never really surrendered to anyone… On the table sits a striking vase of red and yellow roses which seem to slowly unfurl as the afternoon light gets dimmer and shadows play across the curtains, adding to the sense that this is a special place where anything could and might happen.